This blog on Texas education contains posts on higher education, as well as preK-12 policy accountability, testing, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues at both the state and national level. It also represents my digital footprint, of life and career, as a community-engaged scholar in Texas.
A lesser known, and for some, counterintuitive fact, is the astounding achievement of many children of immigrant youth who make, and have always made, our indicators look good. This despite recent changes to H-1B visas as noted below, in addition to a recent, unfortunate change as noted in a February 23, 2018 news report in USA Today, that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) dropped the specific language of being a "nation of immigrants" to describe our country. These changes, of course, are in the context of the persistent demonizing of immigrants by the Trump administration in our country by a president who is himself the grandson of an immigrant and whose wife is an immigrant. Such hypocrisy, narrow-mindedness, and meanness from the top echelons of power.
If the children of immigrants somehow disappeared from the U.S., America would suddenly be in a serious science talent deficit.
That’s the conclusion that can be drawn from a new report from the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to public policy research on trade, immigration, and education.
The organization found that 33 of the 40 finalists of the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search–the leading science competition for U.S. high school students, run by the Society for Science & the Public and now known as the Regeneron Science Talent Search–were the children of immigrants. Specifically, 30 out of the 40 finalists had parents who worked in America on H-1B visas, the option that is no longer available for expedited processing due to a recent policy change from the Trump administration.
“The science competition has been called the ‘Junior Nobel Prize,'” the Foundation says. “These outstanding children of immigrants would never have been in America if their parents had not been allowed into the U.S.”
Their ranks have been steadily increasing since 2004, the Foundation showed.
Here were the countries of origins for the 2016 finalists’ parents: India was No. 1 at 14, followed by China at No. 11.
And of the nine winners of the 2016 competition, seven were the children of immigrants.
I have family members that have immigrated from Mexico who are highly skilled,
but who have nevertheless been exploited within their firms. The
biggest beneficiaries of this are indeed the exploitative, outsourcing companies.
Read on... -Angela
The H-1B program provides temporary, nonimmigrant U.S. work
visas for college-educated workers and fashion models from abroad. While
no one can deny the importance of attracting skilled, talented workers
to the United States, the reality is that the biggest beneficiaries of
the H-1B program are outsourcing companies that have hijacked the
system—using between one-third to one-half of the visas—to replace
thousands of U.S. workers with much-lower-paid H-1B workers while also
sending tech jobs abroad.1
In addition, these outsourcing companies rarely provide H-1B employees
with a path to permanent residence and citizenship. Outsourcing
companies, however, are not the only abusers of the system: The vast
majority of employers that hire H-1B workers pay them wages below the
local average for the occupation.
We need to reform the H-1B program to make it:
Fairer to U.S. workers, who should have the first opportunity to apply for jobs in the United States
Fairer to H-1B workers, who deserve fair pay for their work
according to U.S. wage standards and who should not have to fear
retaliation and exploitation by employers
Major flaws in the H-1B program
U.S. employers don’t have to recruit U.S. workers before hiring H-1B workers. Employers
and corporate lobby groups claim that they use the H-1B primarily to
bring in the “best and brightest” workers from abroad to fill labor
shortages in science, technology, engineering, and math fields (STEM).
But despite this widely held belief, the contrary is true:
Employers are not required to recruit U.S. workers or prove they are experiencing a labor shortage before hiring H-1B workers.
“H-1B-dependent” employers (those filling 15 percent or more of
their U.S. jobs with H-1B workers) are required to recruit U.S. workers
first, but they get around the requirement with a cheap and easy
loophole: they can hire an H-1B worker who holds a master’s degree or
pay the H-1B worker an annual salary of over $60,000. For comparison,
$60,000 is $21,000 lower than the national median wage for all workers employed in computer occupations ($81,430).2
U.S. employers can legally underpay H-1B workers. Corporate
lobbyists and other H-1B proponents claim that H-1B workers cannot be
paid less than U.S. workers because employers must pay H-1B workers no
less than the “prevailing wage.” That is true in theory but:
Employers have the option of paying the prevailing Level 1
“entry-level” wage or Level 2 wage, both of which are well below the
average wage (Level 3) that local employers pay workers in similar jobs.
While the wage level is supposed to correspond to the H-1B worker’s
education and experience, in practice the employer gets to choose the
wage level and the government doesn’t check unless a lawsuit or a
complaint is filed by a worker.
Here’s what wage savings can look like for H-1B employers: The average software developer in the Silicon Valley
commands a salary of $147,000 per year, but an H-1B software developer
earning the Level 1 wage is paid $102,000. That’s a savings of $45,000
per H-1B worker per year for up to six years.3 The top 10 H1-B employers use the program for cheap, temporary labor rather than as a bridge to permanent immigration. The
H-1B visa is considered a “dual-intent” visa, which means that
employers have the option of sponsoring their H-1B workers for lawful
permanent resident (LPR) status, which can then lead to citizenship. But
the top 10 H-1B employers sponsor very few workers for LPR status. In
2014, Tata Consultancy Services, the top H-1B employer that year, hired
5,650 new H-1B workers but only filed for two permanent labor
certifications.4 H-1B workers are often exploited and often arrive in debt, and they are tied to their employers. The
H-1B visa itself is owned and controlled by the employer; an H-1B
worker who is fired or laid off for any reason becomes instantly
deportable. H-1B workers often pay large fees to labor recruiters, which
means that many arrive virtually indentured to their employer, fearing
retaliation and termination if they speak out about workplace abuses or
unpaid wages. And widespread abuses have been documented—even human
trafficking and severe financial bondage.5 Outsourcing companies are using the H-1B program to replace U.S. workers and send tech jobs abroad. The
top 10 employers of H-1B workers are not innovative high-tech firms
like Apple and Google. The biggest users of the H-1B visa are
outsourcing/offshoring companies that specialize in information
technology (IT). Typically, H-1B workers do computer and engineering
work at the office of the U.S. employer but are employed by the
offshoring company. The many reported cases of U.S. workers being laid
off and replaced by H-1B workers have all been facilitated by this
arrangement.6
In multiple incidents, the H-1B workers have been hired with annual
wages around $40,000 less than the workers they have replaced. Before
they are laid off, the U.S. workers are often forced to train their own
H-1B replacements as a condition of their severance packages; this is
euphemistically known as “knowledge transfer.” Major, profitable U.S.
employers like Disney and Toys “R” Us—as well as public employers and
institutions like the University of California and Southern California
Edison—have laid off thousands of U.S. workers who were forced to train
their own replacements. Eventually, many of these replacements and their
jobs were moved offshore.7
Simple reforms can fix the H-1B program and have been proposed in Congress
Require employers to recruit U.S. workers and offer jobs to any
equally or better qualified U.S. workers before hiring H-1B workers.
Require employers who cannot find qualified U.S. workers to pay the
H-1B workers they hire no less than the local average wage for the job
(i.e., eliminate H-1B prevailing wage Levels 1 and 2).
Provide the Labor Department with additional legal authority to
crack down on abuses and exploitation of U.S. and H-1B workers, and to
conduct random audits of H-1B employers.
Appropriate more funding to the Labor Department to hire additional
agents in the Wage and Hour Division and better scrutinize H-1B
applications.
Provide H-1B workers with additional protections against employer retaliation and workplace abuse.
Ban employers from hiring additional H-1B workers if they have violated any wage and hour, labor, or immigration laws.
Reform the H-1B lottery to prioritize higher-paying employers and non-H-1B-dependent employers.8
Quick facts on the H-1B program
An estimated 460,000 H-1B workers are employed in the United States.9
85,000+ new H-1B visas can be issued per year—65,000
plus 20,000 for workers who earned an advanced degree from a U.S.
university plus an unlimited number for employers such as universities
and nonprofit research organizations.
In 2015 there were 113,000 new H-1B workers and 162,000 H-1B workers extended their visas.10
H-1B visas are valid for up to six years (for two three-year terms).
Over half of H-1B visa holders work in IT or other computer occupations.11
H-1Bs also work in engineering, in medicine and health, and at universities.12
H-1B workers can be up to 40 percent cheaper to employ than Americans.13
4. Ron Hira, “The Impact of High-Skilled Immigration on U.S. Workers,”
Testimony before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the
National Interest, Judiciary Committee, Dirksen Senate Office Building,
February 25, 2016.
8.
Most of these reforms have been proposed in bipartisan legislation
sponsored by Senators Durbin and Grassley, which in previous sessions of
Congress was also sponsored or co-sponsored by Senators Bernie Sanders
and Sherrod Brown and former Senator Jeff Sessions. See, for example, “S.2266 – H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2015,” Congress.gov.
