← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Okiereddust
Thread ID: 20853 | Posts: 11 | Started: 2005-11-02
2005-11-02 04:38 | User Profile
[URL="http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/H1B.html"]NumbersUSA Releases Numerical Consequences of Senate Committee Plan to Sell U.S. Skilled Jobs to Foreign Workers[/URL]
Last Week’s Senate Judiciary Committee Vote Would Nearly Triple
the
“This action occurred without any hearings and without any mention of the magnitude,” said Roy Beck, Executive Director of NumbersUSA. “The Senate Judiciary Committee slipped in these changes to immigration law as if they were minor adjustments to raise some extra revenue. But examination of the obscure legal language reveals that the Committee has opened up massive increases in our already unprecedented and unsustainable level of immigration.
To put the size of the increase (around 350,000 a year) in perspective, Beck noted that this country’s traditional immigration from all sources up until 1965 added up to around 250,000 a year. Since 1990, it has been averaging four times higher at around 1 million a year. “And then, in one short meeting last week – without extended public debate or even warning – these Senators recklessly voted to change the law to increase immigration flows by more each year than the total average immigration from all sources during our first 200 years as a nation,” Beck said.
The Specter plan, as amended in Committee, exempts workers’ accompanying family members from the 140,000 visa cap on employment-based immigration. Between 2000 and 2004, an average of 54 percent of all employment-based green cards went to the spouses and minor children of workers. Exempting families of workers from the visa cap would appear to result in around 170,000 additional aliens immigrating permanently to the United States each year.
The plan also raises the cap on employment-based permanent immigration by adding each year the lesser of 90,000 visas or any “unused” employment-based visas from any prior year. An extra 90,000 visas for workers would also lead to around 110,000 of their family members moving to the United States (based on recent experience). Altogether, these two provisions could generate a net increase in permanent immigration of more than 350,000 aliens a year, according to an analysis of the Specter plan by Rosemary Jenks, NumbersUSA’s Director of Government Relations.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee has no right to force American workers to sacrifice their jobs to compensate for government overspending, as this plan ostensibly seeks to raise revenue to offset the profligate spending by Congress and the President” said Beck. “American workers deserve better and American communities need a reduction in immigration, not a plan that forces hundreds of thousands more workers into their already congested job markets and neighborhoods.
In the fall of 2004, Congress included in the Omnibus Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005 a permanent increase of 20,000 in annual admissions of H-1B visa holders by exempting from the annual H-1B cap foreign graduates of U.S. institutions with masters or PhD degrees.
USCIS does not have the legal authority to effectively amend a law to make it apply retroactively. Neither does USCIS have the legal authority to effectively delete parts of a law by ignoring those parts that are inconvenient or with which it disagrees. Yet, Aguirre and his agency have done just that by issuing 13,000 more H-1B visas in FY 2005 than the law allows. Rather than limiting issuances to the 65,000 H-1B visas Congress authorized by law, USCIS issued 78,000 visas not including those that are exempt from the cap or the additional 20,000 authorized in the omnibus.
Since USCIS is playing fast and loose with the law anyway, one might hope that Aguirre would order his agency to correct its error by subtracting 13,000 from the 20,000 visas that are newly available. However, it appears that Aguirre has every intention of issuing the full 20,000 additional H-1B visas.
The legal cap on H-1B visas dropped from 195,000 back to its original level of 65,000 on October 1, 2003. Almost immediately, certain Members of Congress began looking for ways to increase this level, despite the fact that the number of available jobs is decreasing and unemployment among American workers is increasing. The Wall Street Journal announced the same month, for example, that Senator Hatch was working with employers like INTEL and the Indian Government to increase the H-1B cap.
Some 14 million Americans and legal workers currently cannot find full-time jobs in the United States. More than 100,000 American programmers are unemployed. When those who are underemployed or working in other jobs because they cannot find programming jobs, the total grows to about half a million. At the same time, more than 450,000 H-1B workers are employed as programmers in the United States. U.S. employers are cutting jobs at the same time they are importing H-1B workers to fill the remaining jobs.
In FY 2003, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services approved 217,340 H-1B petitions, despite the fact that the legal cap on H-1B visas was 195,000. Amazingly, only 78,000 of the more than 200,000 approved H-1B petitions was counted toward the legal cap. The rest were approved for employment in "exempt" institutions, including universities and nonprofit organizations, which were permitted to apply for unlimited numbers of H-1B workers.
Background
In October, 2000, Congress increased the annual allotment of H-1B visas for foreign, high-tech workers to 195,000 a year for three years beginning in FY 2001. The Senate passed the increase by a vote of 96-1 and the House passed it by voice vote.
These bloated visa numbers were in effect through FY 2003. After October 1, 2003 the annual allotment of H-1B visas returned to 65,000.
More on L-1 Visas
L visas are available for "intracompany transferees" -- they allow employees working at a company's overseas branch to be shifted to the company's worksites in the United States. A visa is available to an alien who will work in a managerial or executive capacity, or has "specialized knowledge", and to spouses and minor children. "Specialized knowledge" with respect to a company is special knowledge of the company product and its application in international markets or an advanced level of knowledge of processes and procedures of the company.
An alien can stay in L status for up to five years if admitted to render services in a capacity that involves specialized knowledge and for up to seven years if admitted to render services in a managerial or executive capacity. The initial period of admission is no longer than three years. Extensions of stay may be authorized in increments of up to two years - new petitions must be filed for all applicants seeking an extension of stay. In 2004, the State Department issued 62,700 L visas (not including visas for family members). In 2004, the Department of Homeland Security approved petitions (including petitions for extension of stay) for 49,696 aliens (not including family members), including 28,840 managers and executives and 20,261 aliens with "specialized knowledge".
"Specialized knowledge" L visas are somewhat comparable to "H-1B" visas, which are temporary visas available for professional workers. However, unlike L visas, H-1B visas are numerically limited (65,000 annual cap) and require payment of at least the prevailing wage, among other requirements not found in the L program. In addition, a $1,500 per alien fee applies to the H-1B program. It has been alleged that certain employers have been intentionally evading the requirements of the H-1B program designed to protect American workers by instead seeking "specialized knowledge" L visas for aliens and then "contracting out" these aliens to other companies, especially after the H-1B program's numerical caps were hit in 2004 and 2005. Allegedly, American workers are being replaced by these alien workers. Since 2002, the number of "specialized knowledge" L visas granted to Indian companies has increased by 400%.
Learn More: