Skilled U.S. workers lose jobs

By Ellyn Ferguson
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — Jai Shanker arrived from India as a young technology worker through a program that lets American employers search the world to temporarily hire skilled workers they say are hard to find in the United States.

Shanker

Shanker said the programs make it tougher for highly skilled U.S. workers to compete in their own country for jobs.

Technology companies, hospitals and universities have turned to H-1B visas, which Congress has temporarily increased, to fill jobs requiring specialized skills. But critics say the program could cause a self-fulfilling prophecy as Americans fail to learn the skills because the jobs go to foreign workers.

Technology companies have been heavy users of the H-1B visa program, but as the economy slumped, so did their use of foreign workers. In 2001, 58 percent of H-1B visas went to computer-related industries. By 2003, that had dropped to 39 percent.

But demand for foreign workers remains steady from engineering companies, universities and other employers.

Shanker

Skilled workers also can work in the United States under TN or L-1 visas.

"We're in a global competition for this talent. It makes no sense to turn away talent," said Sandy Boyd, chairwoman of Compete America, a coalition of companies and universities that supports more H-1B visas.

Boyd said high-tech companies using the visa program are no longer looking for computer programmers but for people who can do specialized research. It's the kind of work that requires people with advanced science degrees. Foreign students in the United States and elsewhere pursue those degrees while fewer U.S. students are doing so, she said.

The National Science Foundation recently noted that foreign students were responsible for the rebound in enrollment in U.S. science and engineering graduate programs after a five-year decline.

"The long-term solution is to make sure we have more Americans in these programs," Boyd said. "It's counterproductive to cut off access to the short-term solution while waiting for the long-term solution."

But critics argue that the U.S. skills base will decline if young people avoid the information technology field and college degrees in science and math because there are fewer jobs available.

"If you farm that breadth of knowledge out, you're asking for trouble in the long run," Shanker said.

Shanker, who has written lawmakers and sent off opinion pieces to technology management publications on the issue, said he does not want to deny opportunities to a new generation of foreign workers. However, he argues that the U.S. high-tech labor force has grown from the years when "anybody who could say 'computer software' could get hired."

Shanker and other critics of the H-1B program accuse companies of using it to bypass U.S. workers and tap the global workforce so they can pay lower salaries.

Backers of the visa program say employers must verify that positions can't be filled from the ranks of U.S. workers and are required to pay foreign workers the prevailing industry wage.

Last year, however, the Government Accountability Office found that the federal government does not have key information needed to oversee the visa program or to determine its long-term effect on the U.S. workforce. The GAO, which is Congress' investigative arm, recommended that the three departments involved in processing and tracking H-1B visas — Labor, State and Homeland Security — do a better job of collecting and coordinating information.

Congress has generally supported business on the H-1B program as well as on other visas that allow foreign workers into the United States.

It's not clear if Congress will again consider increasing the number of H-1B visas. Congress already temporarily raised the limit from 65,000 in fiscal 1998 to as high as 195,000 in 2001, 2002 and 2003 before the cap reverted to 65,000.

H-1B visas issued to foreign workers hired by higher education institutions, nonprofit research groups and government research agencies do not count toward the annual cap.

President Bush may provide an opening for action if he pursues his proposal to deal with primarily illegal immigration from Mexico. Although Bush's focus would be on undocumented immigrants who take low-skill, low-wage jobs, Congress could always broaden the scope.