Imagine heading into a meeting expecting a raise or promotion. Instead, you’re told you’ll be laid off in 90 days. To add salt to the wound, your final task at the company is to train your replacement — a foreign laborer willing to work for less money.
Up to 5,000 Verizon employees could soon face that harsh reality. In late September, the telecom giant announced it would outsource many information technology jobs to Infosys, an Indian offshoring company. Infosys relies heavily on imported “H-1B” visa workers who come to the United States, train under soon-to-be-laid-off Americans, and then transfer that job knowledge to their coworkers back in India.
Such stories are very common. Corporations grossly abuse the H-1B-visa program to cast aside hardworking Americans. It’s time for reform.
H-1B visas authorize skilled foreigners to work in the U.S. for up to six years. Employers must sponsor workers for H-1B visas. All the while, the foreign worker is tied to a specific employer and has little bargaining power, which is why companies prefer them over domestic workers.
Right now, more than 900,000 H-1B-visa holders work in the United States. And each year, more than 85,000 new H-1B applications are approved by the government.
Congress created the program in 1990 in order to allow the world’s “best and brightest” to come to the United States to fill jobs that Americans supposedly couldn’t. Businesses would benefit from these exceptionally skilled workers. American employees, meanwhile, would retain the jobs they were qualified for. A win-win.
Unfortunately, the program was designed in such a way that companies — particularly in the tech industry — can legally import and exploit cheaper, entry-level foreign laborers. Employers can fill positions with H-1B workers without ever attempting to recruit U.S. workers for the job.
[Read more: Trump changes high-tech visa system, making it less attractive for employers]
Fully 40 percent of H-1B visas go to foreigners filling entry-level positions. An additional 40 percent are hired for positions requiring only limited skills, training, and experience in the STEM fields.
Most would agree that employers should be able to bring in workers of outstanding skill and expertise, but that’s not what’s happening with most H-1B guest workers, who are tackling tasks Americans can do and, in many cases, are already doing.
The United States already produces a large surplus of qualified, STEM graduates to fill the number of open STEM positions. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, an astonishing 74 percent of STEM graduates are not employed in the STEM occupations they so rigorously prepared themselves for.
For example, consider Americans with computer-science Ph.D.s. More than 11 percent of computer-science-Ph.D holders are involuntarily working in non-computer-science-related occupations thanks to excess supply, according to data from the National Science Foundation. For the most part, corporations aren’t using H-1B visas out of need; they’re using them out of greed — it’s all about cheap labor. Indeed, 80 percent of H-1B visa holders earn less than their American counterparts.
Verizon is merely the latest U.S. organization to exploit the H-1B program. Last year, the University of California, San Francisco laid off 80 IT workers. Their jobs still existed; they were just given to younger, less-experienced H-1B visa holders.
Connecticut-based Northeast Utilities laid off 220 employees in 2014. But before heading to the unemployment line, these Americans were forced to train their foreign replacements.
That same year, Disney fired more than 250 American IT professionals in order to replace them with H-1B holders. Disney even threatened to withhold severance pay from workers who refused to train the incoming foreign employees.
The list goes on. Sadly, companies will continue to use H-1B visas to boost their bottom lines until lawmakers change the law to prevent companies from using the program to displace American workers.
Congress could make it illegal for companies to replace American workers with H-1B holders. The program ought to be reserved for times when companies truly cannot find a qualified American within our continent-wide workforce.
H-1B-visa holders should complement American workers — not undercut them. By abusing these visas, Verizon and dozens of other U.S. companies have displaced thousands of qualified American workers. It’s up to Congress to prevent more Americans from falling victim to this out-of-control program.
Dr. Paul Nachman is a retired physicist and an affiliate research professor at Montana State University. He is a founding member of Montanans for Immigration Law Enforcement (www.montanamile.org).
