AFL-CIO Report: 'Guest Worker Visa Programs and Professional and Technical Workers in the U.S.'

[Newsjock]

52-page PDF at http://www.dpeaflcio.org/pdf/Gaming_the_System_Report_.pdf

Executive Summary

The United States’ guest worker visa programs are a flashpoint in the ongoing immigration debate. With a fallible reporting process and no unified government agency to provide oversight, the U.S.’s panoply of guest worker visa programs are overly complicated, lack accountability, have lax tracking enforcement and are a prime example of why U.S. immigration policy needs to be reformed. Three factors are especially important in assessing guest worker visa programs, such as the H-1B or L-1 : the program itself, the condition and demand of the domestic U.S. labor market and the situation faced by workers whom such programs affect. The following report will examine these three factors, with attention to the particular effects of guest worker visas on the science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) and education workforces. The end of this report will present a workable framework for immigration reform that the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO (DPE), sees as addressing and remedying many of the problems with guest worker visa programs specifically and U.S. immigration policy in general.

The present guest worker visa system in the U.S. evolved over time. The much discussed H-1B visa, for example, originated in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, creating a temporary program for foreign nationals of “distinguished merit and ability.” This requirement was dropped from the legislation when the Immigration Act of 1990 created the H-1 B program in its current form to bring guest workers to the United States to fill temporary 'shortages' in different sectors of the economy. Initially, only 65,000 foreign workers were allowed to work in the U.S. on an H-1B visa, but the number of H-1B visas has fluctuated due to the yearly allotments set by Congress. Additionally, no cap is placed on workers coming to work for nonprofits or institutions of higher education, 20,000 visas are set aside for foreign workers with Masters or PhDs from American institutions, and there are certain cap exemptions for workers coming from Singapore and Chile as part of free trade agreements (FTAs) (refer to page 18 of this report for details). Without some form of unified body overseeing these programs in light of the genuine needs and capacity of the U.S. economy, the number of H-1B visas allotted each fiscal year becomes dangerously politicized.

Claims of shortages necessitating these programs, especially in the STEM fields, have been widely disputed and are not borne out by basic economic indicators. A Congressionally-mandated study released by the National Research Council found that, “the current size of the H-1B workforce relative to the overall number of IT professionals is large enough to keep wages from rising as fast as might be expected in a tight labor market. ” If a genuine labor shortage existed, wages in these fields would have risen dramatically in ways they have not. In addition, unemployment rates in this sector have increased dramatically over the past year, with engineers reaching their highest unemployment rate since at least 1972. Graduation rates in the STEM fields also indicate that the United States is producing enough graduates to meet the employment needs of the industry (see "By the Numbers, " page 22 of this report).

[exboyfil]

1. The last line won't be the case "Producing enough"

if we continue with this H1-B policy. My daughters are not interested in engineering, and I am not sure I would recommend it to them if they were. Shame is my oldest would be a fantastic engineer (she loves science and is a great problem solver).