To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter 190
To my U.S. readers, I wish you all a happy Fourth of July, and of course
convey general best wishes to all my subscribers in other nations.
On this occasion, I'd like to make some comments, some general and
others highly specific, on the speech President Obama made at American
University on July 1, which you can read at
http://emptysuit.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/obama’s-immigration-speech-transcript
Later in this posting, I will focus on a specific H-1B and his employer,
the latter being a model immigrant entrepreneur cited by Obama in his
speech. But please read the following preamble first.
It is quite fitting, I believe, to write about immigration policy on
American Independence Day. Although I'm a U.S. native, I've lived
closely with immigrants all my life, and strongly support the concept of
immigration to the U.S. of people from all nations and all walks of
life. I consider immigration to be the very essence of America. On the
other hand, I see today's immigration politics as nothing less than a
metaphor for the very destruction of our democracy, established 234
years ago today.
My father was an immigrant from Lithuania, and though my mom was born in
Chicago, she grew up in an immigrant community. My brothers (who by the
way are married to immigrants from Egypt and Canada) and I thus grew up
in an immigrant household, with our parents speaking Yiddish, while
eating very non-Anglo foods and so on. Ironically, I re-established
that same setting for my own daughter, now 18, who grew up in our
Chinese-speaking household, eating very non-Anglo foods, with periodic
visits to relatives in China and so on. And having grown up partly in
East LA, I continue to have a special affinity for Latino immigrants,
a closeness that most white politicians will never feel and never
understand.
Though I am a lifelong Democrat, I was not originally a supporter of
Barack Obama. As a longtime minority activist, I was pleased to see a
black man elected president (and as Jew, I might quip, "Finally a
president named Baruch!" :-) ), but I stated here at the time that I
felt Obama would, sadly, conduct Business As Usual. Certainly he was
surrounding himself with Business As Usual types, and continues to do so
today.
However, during his year and a half in office so far, I've seen a few
glimmers of hope that he has begun to understand that the powerful
special interests are in fact REALLY powerful and even more destructive,
and that his advisers tend to represent thoses interests. Obama has
made a few statements here and there indicating that he is willing to
fight those interests. Not much concrete yet, but I'm still hopeful.
Having said all that, I must say that today's immigration political
actions, including those advocated by Obama in his speech, do indeed
symbolize the loss of our democracy. Powerful entities that have highly
vested interests crassly use this arguably noble tradition of
immigration for their own hidden agendas, horribly corrupting our
political system, and wreaking great economic harm on American citizens,
both native and naturalized.
The analysis I posted the other day on the Kagan e-mail inbox
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/Kagan.txt
shows this quite well. We see that in 1998 the Clinton White House was
highly skeptical of the industry's claims on H-1B, yet felt politically
forced to raise the H-1B cap anyway, in spite of the harm it would bring
to American programmers and engineers. (I'll make a followup posting on
the Kagan memos either today or tomorrow, showing more in this
direction.) I might add that a Harris Poll conducted that same year
showed that the vast majority of Americans opposed an increase in the
cap. So, Clinton's signing of the H-1B increase into law that year
makes an excellent case study on the demise of our democracy.
For all my praise of "Brother Baruch" above, I must lament that he seems
to be showing no such courage on the immigration issue, as evidenced by
this inaccurate, poorly-researched, misleading and some might say
pandering speech.
Let's begin with some excerpts of the Obama speech:
The scientific breakthroughs of Albert Einstein, the inventions of
Nikola Tesla, the great ventures of Andrew Carnegie’s U.S. Steel and
Sergey Brin’s Google, Inc. -– all this was possible because of
immigrants...
So this steady stream of hardworking and talented people has made
America the engine of the global economy and a beacon of hope around
the world. And it’s allowed us to adapt and thrive in the face of
technological and societal change. To this day, America reaps
incredible economic rewards because we remain a magnet for the best
and brightest from across the globe. Folks travel here in the hopes
of being a part of a culture of entrepreneurship and ingenuity, and
by doing so they strengthen and enrich that culture. Immigration also
means we have a younger workforce -– and a faster-growing economy —
than many of our competitors...
Just a few weeks ago, we had an event of small business owners at the
White House. And one business owner was a woman named Prachee Devadas
who came to this country, became a citizen, and opened up a
successful technology services company. When she started, she had
just one employee. Today, she employs more than a hundred people...
And while we provide students from around the world visas to get
engineering and computer science degrees at our top universities, our
laws discourage them from using those skills to start a business or
power a new industry right here in the United States. Instead of
training entrepreneurs to create jobs on our shores, we train our
competition...
We should make it easier for the best and the brightest to come to
start businesses and develop products and create jobs...
Some of this is blatantly misleading. Einstein is one of my
(intellectual, not personal) heroes, but he essentially did nothing
after he came to the U.S. Brin is a bright young man, but he came here
as a family immigrant at age 6, rather than as a foreign student as
Obama's listeners might conclude. Google's search engine, PageRank, was
originally the idea of Brin's U.S.-native partner Larry Page, not Brin,
and in any case there are lots of other search engines.
Our H-1B/green card policy (and Obama seems to be advocating a
fast-track green card system for certain STEM people, which I strongly
oppose) is causing our nation to have FEWER native best-and-brightest,
jobs-creating, world-leading scientists and engineers. As I've written,
our government's central science agency, the National Science
Foundation, explicitly admitted back in 1989 that H-1B and other efforts
to bring in more foreign scientists and engineers would suppress salary
growth and thus, the NSF went on to say, discourage of domestic students
from pursuing doctorates in science and engineering. Anyone without a
vested interest here would see the stupidity of such a policy, and would
be outraged.
The effect of H-1B on careers in science is absolutely disgraceful. The
government and academia have created a huge oversupply of PhD
scientists, which has created a gauntlet post doc labor system under
which aspiring scientists have no idea whether they will even get to
have a career in science. The government might as well make it illegal
to be a scientist. Again, an absurdly stupid and outrageous system,
fueled by the H-1B program.
Quite contrary to Obama's grand claims of job creation, our H-1B/green
card policies have made careers in software, electrical engineering and
science untenable for many Americans. It's sadly ironic that Obama
trumpets the youth of the immigrants, since our H-1B and green card
programs have hit older (age 35+) workers especially hard--which is the
very reason why the industry likes these programs so much. Younger
workers cost less, in both wages and benefits, than older workers, and
our immigration policies provide employers with an inflated pool of
youngsters to hire, as Obama's own statement (hopefully NOT a Freudian
slip) shows.
Now, let's discuss Ms. Devadas, Obama's model (and not coincidentally
Indian) entrepreneur. She's to be commended for building a successful
small business from scratch, yes, the American dream. Good for her.
She has developed a diverse set of employees, and certainly is not
running an H-1B IT sweatshop. (Her firm is not primarily even in the IT
area anyway.)
Yet an H-1B hiring by Devadas shows exactly what's wrong with the H-1B
program.
The DOL LCA database shows that in 2009, Devadas' firm, Synergy
Enterprises Inc. (SEI) filed a Labor Condition Application (LCA) to hire
an Analyst/Data Manager. SEI's Web page shows only one worker with that
title, Prasad Kothari, and Mr. Kothari's LinkedIn page shows that he
indeed was hired by SEI in 2009. So, he is the H-1B SEI asked for
permission to hire.
Kothari's SEI bio, at http://www.seiservices.com/AboutSeniorStaff.aspx,
vividly demonstrates a statement I've made so many times: Though I
strongly support bringing in "the best and the brightest" from around
the world, the vast majority of H-1Bs and employer-sponsored immigrants
are ordinary people doing ordinary work. Mr. Kothari is doing ordinary
data analysis work, using ordinary statistical and programming tools
acquired from an ordinary background, degrees at the University of
Mumbai and the University of Arizona. While those are respectable
schools and I think too much emphasis is often placed on a person's
"academic pedigree," it is clear that Kothari is not our next Nobel
laureate. Again, just an ordinary guy, presumably doing a good job, but
that's all.
My point is this: There are many, many U.S. citizens and permanent
residents who are qualified for Kothari's job and who would jump at the
chance to have it. Though H-1B law did not require SEI to give hiring
priority to Americans, Obama's speech implies that Kothari is
supplementing the U.S. workforce, a plus to the nation, rather than
keeping a qualified American from the job, which sadly is exactly what
he's doing.
Today's San Jose Mercury News profiles Beth Mezias, age 43 (note that
age!), a software engineer who was laid off from Adobe Systems in 2008,
and had been jobless until this week,
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_15421229
Meanwhile the DOL database shows that Adobe filed at least 11 LCAs to
hire software engineers in 2009, and remember each LCA can be used to
hire multiple workers. Adobe, of course, would say that the H-1Bs it
hired are doing work that Ms. Mezias was not qualified for, the type of
claim that I have shown in detail elsewhere is generally a red herring.
Just as many unemployed or underemployed Americans could have done
Kothari's job, it is pretty certain that Mezias could have done some of
the H-1Bs' jobs at Adobe. Her problem, almost certainly, was not lack
of qualifications (since 2008 she has successfully sold several Anroid
phone applications), but rather her AGE, 43. She was just too expensive
relative to H-1Bs.
One of my favorite subscribers wrote to me yesterday. He is a careful
thinker, slow to overgeneralize. Politically conservative, he startled
me with his radical language in an e-mail message to me, which
graphically detailed his problems getting work as a software contractor.
He is finding work harder and harder to get, and rates have fallen
precipitously. Those that decide on his fate are mostly H-1Bs or former
H-1Bs, who he believes (quite correctly, in my experience) favor hiring
their co-ethnics, especially those with H-1B status.
It's like a continuing nightmare for this seasoned software developer
who prides himself on the quality of his work, and is simply trying to
make a living. I was startled to see this conservative, soft-spoken
person demand of me, "Where is the existential horror?" in my postings
in this e-newsletter. Don't I realize how badly people are being hurt
by the H-1B/green card programs, he pressed? I had to assure this
longtime subscriber that indeed I do realize it.
Unfortunately, President Obama does not realize the situation. Or
worse, as seen in the Clinton White House memos, Obama does realize it
but feels forced to act against his conscience. Neither of these
scenarios is a pleasant one to consider on this American Independence
Day.
Norm