What do union leaders and other labor experts say about increasing the number of H-1B visas?

Morton Bahr, president of Communications Workers of America and chairman of the Department for Professional Employees (DPE), AFL-CIO "declared that allegations of major shortages in information technology (IT) jobs are unfounded and should not be used as an excuse for Congress to allow more foreign workers to take U.S. jobs." The DPE "comprises 22 national unions representing four million professional and technical workers in the U.S." According to Bahr, "There is no proven crisis regarding the demand for information technology workers that justifies the drastic action of filling these jobs with foreign workers. We should be very careful about IT employers crying wolf just to enlarge the labor pool, depress salaries and benefits and undermine working conditions as has been done by other employers in the past."

"The American Engineering Association opposes any increase in H-1B or any labor related visas on the grounds that such an increase will increase the harm endured by American scientists and engineers. The impetus for these hearings was a report by the Information Technology Association of America and a report by the Department of Commerce which parrots the ITAA report. Both reports were grossly unscientific and very biased to the conclusion there is a critical shortage of IT workers."

Even Dr. Robert Lerman, director of the Human Resources Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Professor of Economics at American University said, "The evidence is far from conclusive about the existence of a serious shortage, especially among some segments of the IT labor market. Employment growth has been rapid... but not among computer programmers. Most importantly, the trends in real wages do not indicate the rapid growth in compensation that would suggest a market in which employers are attempting to adjust to a labor shortage."

In testimony before Congress, Dr. John R. Reinert, president of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - USA (IEEE-USA) said, "Claims of high-tech worker shortages are inflated, the available domestic labor supply is understated, and the wisdom of expanding immigration is overrated."