President Obama’s effort to recruit immigrants skilled in science and technology industries is crowding out Americans who already work in those fields despite multiple assurances from his administration that doing so fills holes in the domestic labor market.
That was the argument of analysts and representatives of the science, technology, engineering and math industries at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday that examined the effects of temporary work visa programs designed to encourage educated foreign nationals to take U.S. jobs.
While the White House has claimed a shortage of qualified Americans is driving its push to attract foreign engineers and scientists, Hal Salzman, professor at the J.J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, argued that the U.S. supply of graduates in those fields is far greater than the industries’ hiring needs to begin with.
“The predominant function of IT guest-worker visa programs is to facilitate the offshoring of IT work — that is, the ability of firms to move IT work from the U.S. to offshore locations is highly dependent on their supply” of temporary work visas, Salzman said.
Skilled foreign workers most commonly find work using H-1B visas, which allow American companies to hire immigrants for certain positions on a temporary basis. L-1 visas allow international companies to temporarily bring foreign workers to their U.S. offices.
Although the programs were originally intended to help employers fill openings for which there were no qualified U.S. candidates, critics claim both H-1B and L-1 visas displace American workers in favor of foreign workers as businesses search for new ways to save money.
“Employer abuse of the H-1B visa program is well documented and usually boils down to employers seeking to cut costs at the expense of current and future U.S. workers,” said Paul Almeida, president of AFL-CIO’s Department of Professional Employees.
Almeida said employers generally pare down their personnel costs through the visa program in one of three ways: They hire a guest worker to save up to 25 percent in wages, contract work once performed by American workers to temporary guest workers, or they outsource their work to a “lower-cost foreign country.”
He cited Disney World and Southern California Edison as examples of companies that had taken the latter tack.
At Southern California Edison, a company that has come under fire for its mass lay-offs, the impact of temporary visa programs on American jobs is already evident.
“Recently, here in Southern California, our largest signatory employer, Southern California Edison, has terminated or is in the process of terminating 800 American citizen, highly skilled and degreed, information technology workers in favor of hiring their replacements through the H-1B visa program,” said Patrick Lavin, financial secretary of southern California’s chapter of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, a union representing 10,000 utility workers.
Several former employees of Southern California Edison and other companies shared their personal experiences with the changing technology sector, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Southern California Edison was a company that many people started with at a young age, could work there through their lifetimes, and retire with a good pension and benefits. That was my plan,” said one worker who had been with the company for several decades before his job was handed to a foreign worker with an H-1B visa. “We were forced to train the less qualified foreign workers hired to take our jobs. Over 400 hardworking, intelligent people have lost their jobs due to the H-1B visa program.”
According to Lavin, Southern California Edison has raided two overseas companies, Infosys and Tata, to find foreign replacements for American workers.
A comparison of the data suggests the move could indeed save the company money. For example, a systems engineer earns an average salary of $125,838 at Southern California Edison, but just $65,748 at Infosys, according to Glassdoor.com, a website that provides salary and employment information.
Infosys was the first Indian company to be listed on the NASDAQ.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., called Southern California Edison’s move “deeply disturbing” and criticized H-1B visas for replacing American workers “en masse,” which he said runs counter to the spirit of the program.
The company is one of California’s largest utilities and thus falls under heavy regulatory control.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration, pointed to the H-1B program as the reason why companies like Southern California Edison could import cheaper workers from overseas at the expense of American jobs.
“Southern California Edison—a power company rooted in the United States of America—is converting, laying off, and terminating the employment of people who have been with them for a number of years,” Sessions said in February.
He noted the company has transitioned multiple positions to foreign workers entering the U.S. with H-1B visas who have no intention of seeking citizenship.
“They are not coming under the immigration policy where they would move from green card into permanent residence and into citizenship,” Sessions said. “They come solely for a limited period of time to take a job, and they work for less pay too often.”
Darrell West, vice president of governance studies at the Brookings Institute, said there is a much greater demand for H-1B visas than the government may issue under the program’s current cap, which he advocated lifting.
West told the Washington Examiner the visas lock foreign workers into positions at the companies that bring them to the U.S. because they don’t control their work authorization.
“The one problem of the H-1B visa program is the visa goes to the company as opposed to the employee,” he said. “There are employees who have complained they get paid less and that they have difficulty moving to another job because they don’t control the visa.”
Prospective immigrants who want to work in America have to apply for an H-1B visa through the company they will work for in the U.S., West said.
He noted many of the students who graduate from U.S. universities in science, technology, engineering and math programs already come from overseas.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has also argued in favor of lifting H-1B caps, stating “it cannot be seriously argued that our existing caps under the H-1B program or for permanent high skilled immigration are realistic in today’s economy. These caps were set in 1990, and our economy has grown since then.”
Southern California Edison was invited to testify at the hearing, but declined to appear.
