Economics, Not Innovation, Drives H-1B Debate
Guys,
This is an article from ComputerWorld about H1B Debate.
Please read this and frwd to as many people as possible.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=112241
Economics, Not Innovation, Drives H-1B Debate
Mark Willoughby Today’s Top Stories or Other IT Management Stories
July 03, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Economics is driving the IT industry to doggedly persist in efforts to secure a big boost in H-1B visas for foreign workers this year, despite the move by a divided Congress on June 20 to table the controversial issue and seek voter input.
So far, large IT corporations have dictated the H-1B debate. The IT industry's lobbyists worked overtime to engineer a compromise between the Senate and the House to boost H-1B visas for their large corporate benefactors, whom CNN's Lou Dobbs dubs "corporate supremacists."
In the deal, the IT companies wanted the Senate to drop its support for a bracero guest-worker program for poor Mexican campesinos. In return, the House would agree to increase H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers from 65,000 to more than 115,000, with regular yearly increases baked in.
The IT corporate lobbyists -- the Semiconductor Industry Association, the Information Technology Industry Council, the Information Technology Association of America, the AEA and others -- are again twisting arms in the House, where immigration is as popular as lobbyist Jack Abramoff, in an attempt to pass the H-1B visa increase.
Maybe immigration hearings away from all the miasma raised by cash changing hands inside the Beltway would give citizens and IT workers a chance to be heard. We can hope that the H-1B issue isn't overshadowed by the debate about amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants or finessed by corporate lobbyists in smoke-filled rooms.
IT lobbyists have tried, mostly in vain, to make the ideologues in the House understand the innovation argument for H-1B visas. In a fairly traditional tactic, almost a dozen members of Congress and one senator were flown to India on an all-expenses-paid junket in 2004.
The House members were unmoved, but not the representative of the upper chamber. The lone senator on that 2004 India junket, Texas Republican John Cornyn, has joined the advocates of the H-1B visa increase and is sponsoring the so-called SKIL (Securing Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership) Act of 2006 with Sens. George Allen (R-Va.), Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.).
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Cornyn has pocketed more than $145,000 in contributions from IT corporations since 2000, including $13,818 for the Indian trip. The other sponsors have also accepted generous high-tech contributions.
The large IT corporations repeat the mantra that the U.S. needs these skilled foreign workers to innovate in order to remain competitive.
That is a specious argument. Innovation by large IT corporations is usually of the incremental kind, adding new features to established products to protect profits. Remember how Microsoft innovated Netscape out of existence?
When large IT corporations need disruptive technologies to create or enter new markets, they usually acquire an innovative small company. Most seminal technical innovation in the U.S. is in entrepreneurial small companies, not in risk-adverse IT corporations. Microsoft has acquired many innovative companies over the past 18 months to enter new markets, a half-dozen in message hygiene alone.
The real argument, rarely made by IT corporations, for increasing H-1B visas is simple economics. H-1B workers are a new type of indentured servant. In a new, unfamiliar country, they are docile and focus on working hard. The H-1B sponsorship provisions make it very difficult for H-1B foreign workers to change jobs.
Large numbers of productive H-1B workers save millions in human resources and R&D costs, boosting the value of their employers' stock. The economic argument makes IT corporations sound greedy. The innovation argument plays better on Main Street.
The most reasoned discussion of the complex and impassioned H-1B visa issue comes from the venerable Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (www.ieeeusa.org/policy/issues/H1bvisa/index.html). It asks, What about declining enrollments in domestic computer science curricula, rampant abuses in the H-1B program, the lack of enforcement of H-1B prevailing-wage requirements and retraining the many unemployed engineers in the U.S.?
The IEEE makes another H-1B proposal you never hear from the large IT companies and their lobbyists: Why not offer permanent immigration status to skilled foreign technology workers when there is a proven shortage of engineers or programmers? Foreign workers with permanent immigration status would be freed of constraints on job mobility, which the large technology companies in no way favor.
The last H-1B issue you rarely hear discussed is an emotional IT workforce organizing and replaying the rise of unions in the steel and automotive industries. If IT workers start to organize, the jobs will move offshore for sure.
Mark Willoughby, CISSP, is a 20-year IT industry veteran and journalist. Contact him at milloughby@earthlink.net.
Guys,
This is an article from ComputerWorld about H1B Debate.
Please read this and frwd to as many people as possible.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=112241
Economics, Not Innovation, Drives H-1B Debate
Mark Willoughby Today’s Top Stories or Other IT Management Stories
July 03, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Economics is driving the IT industry to doggedly persist in efforts to secure a big boost in H-1B visas for foreign workers this year, despite the move by a divided Congress on June 20 to table the controversial issue and seek voter input.
So far, large IT corporations have dictated the H-1B debate. The IT industry's lobbyists worked overtime to engineer a compromise between the Senate and the House to boost H-1B visas for their large corporate benefactors, whom CNN's Lou Dobbs dubs "corporate supremacists."
In the deal, the IT companies wanted the Senate to drop its support for a bracero guest-worker program for poor Mexican campesinos. In return, the House would agree to increase H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers from 65,000 to more than 115,000, with regular yearly increases baked in.
The IT corporate lobbyists -- the Semiconductor Industry Association, the Information Technology Industry Council, the Information Technology Association of America, the AEA and others -- are again twisting arms in the House, where immigration is as popular as lobbyist Jack Abramoff, in an attempt to pass the H-1B visa increase.
Maybe immigration hearings away from all the miasma raised by cash changing hands inside the Beltway would give citizens and IT workers a chance to be heard. We can hope that the H-1B issue isn't overshadowed by the debate about amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants or finessed by corporate lobbyists in smoke-filled rooms.
IT lobbyists have tried, mostly in vain, to make the ideologues in the House understand the innovation argument for H-1B visas. In a fairly traditional tactic, almost a dozen members of Congress and one senator were flown to India on an all-expenses-paid junket in 2004.
The House members were unmoved, but not the representative of the upper chamber. The lone senator on that 2004 India junket, Texas Republican John Cornyn, has joined the advocates of the H-1B visa increase and is sponsoring the so-called SKIL (Securing Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership) Act of 2006 with Sens. George Allen (R-Va.), Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.).
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Cornyn has pocketed more than $145,000 in contributions from IT corporations since 2000, including $13,818 for the Indian trip. The other sponsors have also accepted generous high-tech contributions.
The large IT corporations repeat the mantra that the U.S. needs these skilled foreign workers to innovate in order to remain competitive.
That is a specious argument. Innovation by large IT corporations is usually of the incremental kind, adding new features to established products to protect profits. Remember how Microsoft innovated Netscape out of existence?
When large IT corporations need disruptive technologies to create or enter new markets, they usually acquire an innovative small company. Most seminal technical innovation in the U.S. is in entrepreneurial small companies, not in risk-adverse IT corporations. Microsoft has acquired many innovative companies over the past 18 months to enter new markets, a half-dozen in message hygiene alone.
The real argument, rarely made by IT corporations, for increasing H-1B visas is simple economics. H-1B workers are a new type of indentured servant. In a new, unfamiliar country, they are docile and focus on working hard. The H-1B sponsorship provisions make it very difficult for H-1B foreign workers to change jobs.
Large numbers of productive H-1B workers save millions in human resources and R&D costs, boosting the value of their employers' stock. The economic argument makes IT corporations sound greedy. The innovation argument plays better on Main Street.
The most reasoned discussion of the complex and impassioned H-1B visa issue comes from the venerable Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (www.ieeeusa.org/policy/issues/H1bvisa/index.html). It asks, What about declining enrollments in domestic computer science curricula, rampant abuses in the H-1B program, the lack of enforcement of H-1B prevailing-wage requirements and retraining the many unemployed engineers in the U.S.?
The IEEE makes another H-1B proposal you never hear from the large IT companies and their lobbyists: Why not offer permanent immigration status to skilled foreign technology workers when there is a proven shortage of engineers or programmers? Foreign workers with permanent immigration status would be freed of constraints on job mobility, which the large technology companies in no way favor.
The last H-1B issue you rarely hear discussed is an emotional IT workforce organizing and replaying the rise of unions in the steel and automotive industries. If IT workers start to organize, the jobs will move offshore for sure.
Mark Willoughby, CISSP, is a 20-year IT industry veteran and journalist. Contact him at milloughby@earthlink.net.
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