To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter 165

I've always been grateful to my university for allowing me to speak
freely on the H-1B issue, and even giving me an award for it.  The cover
story of this month's issue of the UC Davis alumni magazine has the
following theme (http://ucdavismagazine.ucdavis.edu/):

   Informed Dissent:  Six outspoken UC Davis experts talk about why they
   put themselves on the front lines of debates on tough topics:
   California water, obesity, aerial spraying in the Bay Area, visas for
   foreign computer programmers and making room for women corporate
   leaders.

Their profile of me is enclosed below.

Norm

http://ucdavismagazine.ucdavis.edu/issues/sp09/informed%20dissent_5_matloff.html

UC Davis Magazine

Informed Dissent

Norm Matloff: Speaking Up for America's High-Tech Workers

Professor Norm Matloff's research areas include parallel processing,
computer communication networks and data security -- traditional
computer science fields not unlike those of his colleagues in the UC
Davis Department of Computer Science. But it's his active involvement
in issues of immigration and employment, age discrimination and
affirmative action that in 2002 earned him the Academic Senate's Public
Service Award. He is a critic of increasing the numbers of short-term
visas, known as H1-Bs, issued to foreign, usually young, workers in the
computer industry. Matloff maintains that such jobs ought to be filled
by American programmers, many of whom are victims of age discrimination
or are recent computer science graduates from U.S. universities. He
believes that high-tech companies hire H1-B workers instead because
they can pay them less. He maintains a Web site consisting of links to
articles on various aspects of immigration written by specialists in
the field. And he produces an electronic newsletter devoted to H1-B,
offshoring and age discrimination issues (which he says are "all the
same") for subscribers who range from programmers and engineers to
academics, researchers and policy analysts in Washington, D.C.

The e-mail messages Matloff receives from many of his subscribers make
clear "they feel as long as they can explain to people in Congress what
the situation really is with H1-B, then Congress will do the right
thing," he says. "And that's not true." Matloff says he was "a little
na�ve" when he first began talking with Washington policymakers about
the issue. "I'd been keenly interested in politics since I was a kid,
but I didn't realize how the political world works" -- how much power
vested interests have on Capitol Hill. "And," he says, "I didn't expect
it."

Matloff says the original H1 visa program was specifically intended to
enable "the best and the brightest" foreign nationals to be employed in
the United States on a temporary basis while awaiting permanent
residency (a "green card"). "And I highly support that," he says. But
vested interests -- meaning, in this case, Matloff says, the tech
industry, academia and immigration lawyers -- have lobbied Congress to
raise the numbers of H1-B visas issued because it's to their economic
benefit to build a workforce that's willing to earn less.

"Academia has a huge vested interest in H1-B," Matloff says.
Universities hire many foreign nationals as postdoctoral researchers
and then sponsor them for a green card, a process that can take several
years. The H-1B visa allows them to work legally in the United States
during that period. This can result in a graduate student pool that is
willing to work for less money, thus keeping research assistant
salaries low and driving away domestic students.

"Less obvious," says Matloff, is that universities have a "huge
incentive" to support the tech industry's push for H1-Bs because it is
to their mutual benefit -- good relationships with industry can
translate into donations of equipment and research funding, or even
whole buildings. Matloff cites Stanford as an example, with its Bill
Gates Hall, "a beautiful new computer science building" whose lobby
features a donor list that's "a who's who," Matloff says, of major
high-tech companies. Across the street? "Hewlett Hall and Packard
Hall."

Matloff gives "high credit" to UC Davis and the College of Engineering
for supporting his activities, citing the Academic Senate's Public
Service Award he received for his work.

"I've always had a social conscience," Matloff says. And when an
academic is involved in an issue, "I think it does make people pay more
attention," such as when representatives of an organization opposing
H1-B talk to people on Capitol Hill,. Citing his work, Matloff says,
gives the work "a little bit of legitimacy."