Somehow this is supposed to be good for the American worker:
The H-1B program permits foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in their area of specialty to be employed in the United States for up to six years. Under federal regulations, all such workers must receive pay equal or higher to the "local prevailing wage," and employers are supposed to ensure that they're not displacing qualified Americans in the process.
The GAO report didn't name which employers or industries were at fault. Kara Calvert, the director of government relations for the Information Technology Industry Council, emphasized that her organization's member companies don't abuse the system and use the visas only for "legitimate purposes." ITIC's members include Apple Computer, Dell, Cisco Systems, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.
Four examples cited in the report showed that Labor Department officials in recent years have approved applications even though the salaries listed on the forms ranged from $3,000 to nearly $24,000 lower than the annual prevailing rate. In fiscal year 2005, for instance, a petition for an employee who should have been paid at least $75,000 went through even though the application listed an offer of only $55,000.
It's not like the H1-B program was created to bring over people with a background in research science. A significant amount of the workers who come over are IT workers ranging from software developers to IT support people. These are not exactly career fields that have a very low number of Americans working in them to begin with. All too often employers will use outrageous excuses about how they couldn't find a qualified American because "so many Americans are terrible programmers or sysadmins," but the reality is that they just don't want to pay $75,000 to an American when an Indian or another foreigner will accept $55,000.
What is not surprising to me is that most of the people who support the flood of immigration into America, both through illegal immigrants on the unskilled end and skilled on H1-B and L1 visa ends, is that they are economics, MBAs, lawyers and public policy wonks. To put it nicely, they are the people who will not stand to lose their jobs to foreign workers coming from desparate economic situations.
I am not against the H1-B system, but it needs to be radically reconceived. It should only extend in unfettered form to people in bonafide research science roles such as the hard sciences. Engineering disciplines, the ones where Americans are pretty well-represented, should be very limited. If they aren't limited, the H1-B visa program will only serve to allow foreign workers to be exploited while the wages of citizens go down.
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