H-1B Visas: Harming American Workers

The H-1B visa program allows people in professional occupations to work in the United States on a long-term basis with the opportunity to convert to permanent residents. The program's ostensible purpose was to supply American businesses with professional workers when there were shortages of qualified American workers. But, during the popping of the ‘high-tech bubble’ early this decade, with tens of thousands of highly skilled U.S. workers being laid off, the industry continued to hire tens of thousands of new H-1B workers. Thereby, they were able to cut labor costs by replacing American workers with foreign workers willing to accept lower wages.

Industry lobbyists with Microsoft’s Bill Gates at the forefront have tried to convince Congress that there is a shortage of specialty occupation workers and American competitiveness will suffer if they are not able to hire more foreign workers. They have tried to convince Congress and the public that they only hire the ‘best and brightest’ foreign workers and do so only when comparable U.S. workers are unavailable. This propaganda campaign ignores the fact that there is no requirement in the H-1B visa program that employers have to hire available U.S. workers first. It also ignores the fact that nearly half of the foreign workers that they seek visas for have no more than an undergraduate degree.


[Posted by Maricela Gutierrez]

http://www.fairus.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=16997&security=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1841