HAHAHA! Another result from creating IPOs for non-existant dot com businesses.

[url]www.latimes.com/business/la-112101visa.story[/url]

U.S. Tech Firms Abusing Visa Program, Critics Say

WASHINGTON -- Amid a massive wave of tech layoffs, U.S. firms obtained government approval to bring in a record 163,200 foreign workers under a controversial program that critics say is being abused to hire cheaper overseas talent.

Although the number of visas approved under the H-1B program fell short of the 195,000 allowed annually, the hiring binge in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 has caused a furor in an industry that has experienced more than 600,000 layoffs over the last 10 months.

"At a time when hundreds of thousands of Americans are out of work, many employers are rubbing salt in the wound by hiring foreign workers," said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington group that has long sought to curtail immigration to the United States.

The record applications for foreign workers--the majority of whom take jobs in the high-tech industry--come more than a year after Silicon Valley mounted a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort to persuade Congress to expand the program to satisfy skyrocketing demand for highly skilled workers.

Executives from companies such as Sun Microsystems Inc., Intel Corp. and Motorola Inc. successfully argued that if the "new economy" were to continue to boom, it was crucial for the government to admit more engineers and other skilled workers.

But by the time Congress raised the H-1B visa limits from 115,000 to 195,000 in October 2000, the tech boom was already waning.

Industry officials say they are eager to hire Americans. But they contend that even with this year's layoffs, the number of U.S. workers with technical skills isn't large enough to fill all the job vacancies.

"The dot-com boom may be over but we are still in the middle of a skills shortage," said Theresa Cardinal Brown, manager of labor and immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. "Every organization in the country has a need for information technology workers," including those in areas "that are still growing, like manufacturing, finance and health care."

The surge in worker visas over the last 12 months is due in part to pent-up demand for engineers of all types as U.S. colleges and universities have graduated fewer than needed. In addition, companies rushed to hire more foreigners last year before a $500 visa application fee increase was imposed by the INS in December 2000.

Murali Krishna Devarakonda, a software engineer and board member of the Immigrants Support Network, a Budd Lake, N.J.-based group that assists H-1B visa holders, said the INS' statistics are misleading.

He said the INS data indicate only the number of approved visa applications, not the number of foreign workers who actually come to the U.S. He also speculated that "most of the petitions were filed before this economic slump started."

(continued)

But demand for visa applications has remained robust through the economic downturn. Besides the surge of applications this summer, the INS still has 29,000 pending applications that it has shifted into the current fiscal year.

Daniel M. Larson, director of government relations for Texas Instruments Inc., where H-1B workers number 800 and make up about 3% of the work force, said the market for electrical engineers is still extremely competitive.

"We are dependent on H-1B workers and consider them a valuable part of our company," said Larson, whose company has laid off 2,500 workers in the last year. He did not have figures on whether any H-1B workers were part of the layoffs.

For some technology workers laid low by the economic slump, the explanations provide little consolation.

"The level of anger over this program in the technology industry just keeps rising," said John Miano, chairman of the Programmer's Guild, a Summit, N.J., trade group that represents software engineers.

Gene Nelson, a divorced father of two, alleged that most of the H-1B visa holders working at Boston-based Genuity Inc. kept their positions this summer when he and 500 workers lost their jobs at the Internet infrastructure services provider.

"Big companies basically want a work force of independent contractors . . . they can pay low wages to," said Nelson, who made $49,000 a year. If it weren't for the H-1B program, Nelson said, he would still "have a job and be making more money."

Genuity did not return calls seeking comment.

The rancor has spilled over to Congress, where at least one lawmaker has introduced legislation that would scale back the controversial program.

The H-1B visa program was created by the Immigration Act of 1990. It allowed companies to hire foreign workers with hard-to-find technical skills. Roughly 60% of H-1B visa holders are in computer programming and other information technology fields, according to a report released last year by the General Accounting Office.

Workers are supposed to earn the same salary and benefits as their American-born counterparts.

Amid the tight job market, there are concerns about abuses of the H-1B visa holders themselves. A few immigrants have begun campaigning for reform of the program, citing instances of employers paying low wages and threatening to seek the deportation of foreign workers who complain.

The GAO--which found that foreigners were offered a median starting salary of $45,000 last year--said there is little policing of the H-1B program by the INS.

Devarakonda, of the Immigrants Support Network, agreed with the GAO's assessment. "The current system is certainly flawed," he said. "The government doesn't have the resources to police" H-1B.

Some of us FILGH's do not want to be associated with the FDCGH's

Cordially,

ARSwami

I am personally sick of the H1B visa workers here when there are citizens of _this_ country that are out of work.

I was talking to some friends who were layed off from numerous large companies in Silicon Valley, and according to them the majority of people being layed off are Americans. The Indian and Chinese H1-B guys still have jobs.

This is not solely an IPO issue as Imbroblio suggested. All companies are booting Americans and keeping H1-Bs.

... Not all  [;)]

I've been arguing this for a while now... glad to see it finally get some press.

For futher reading, check this link

[url]heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.real.html[/url]

Dr. Matloff has been a thorn in the side of the ITAA for quite some time now.