Category: Guest Authors

New Batch of H-1B Workers Arriving Soon

By Joe Guzzardi

On April 1, employers will learn which among them will gain access to H-1B visas, and also the total number of visas each will be awarded. Now entering its fourth decade of aggressively displacing qualified U.S. tech workers, and often presenting insurmountable employment roadblocks to recent U.S. college graduates seeking jobs, the H-1B is the meal ticket that enriches corporate America on the backs of cheap foreign-born labor.

Created as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, the visa’s major flaws, among many, are its low-wage component and that the visa holders are powerless to look elsewhere for better, higher paying jobs because their employers control the visas – modern day indentured servitude or a form of 21^st century slavery.

Over a 32-year-long time span, regardless of Republican or Democratic-held White Houses, little has changed in the H-1B dialogue. Employers preposterously claim that without foreign-born tech workers, their solvency would be at risk. In truth, tech companies are flush with cash, and native-born tech workers are readily available for hire. A Census Bureau analysis dated June 2021 found that among the 50 million employed college graduates ages 25 to 64 in 2019, 37 percent reported a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering, but only 14 percent worked in a STEM occupation. Less than one-third of STEM-educated students work in the STEM field. Translation: thousands of U.S. STEM workers are available. What’s missing is employers’ willingness to hire them.

Congresses, year after year, have ignored sound testimony and criticism from credible witnesses, including Democrats, that the H-1B is an American job killer that generously lines the pockets of craven employers. Those employers have adopted the heartless practice of forcing the U.S. employees they fire to first train their H-1B replacements or lose severance benefits.

Examples of on-target critiques from otherwise pro-immigration advocates:

• Ray Marshall, President Jimmy Carter’s labor secretary: “One of the best con jobs ever done on the American public and political systems…If you’ve got H-1B workers, you don’t have to do training or pay good wages.”
   
• 60 Minutes: “…(W)e discovered more and more are taking advantage of loopholes in the law to fire American workers and replace them with younger, cheaper, temporary foreign workers with H-1B visas.”
   
• New York Times: “Former [Disney] employees said many immigrants who arrived were younger technicians with limited data skills who did not speak English fluently and had to be instructed in the basics of the work.”

In their recent article titled “Biden Can Fix the Anti-Worker, H-1B Immigration Visa Scam,” authors Ron Hira, Daniel Costa and Hal Salzman argue that President Joe Biden has “a clear roadmap, the legal authority, and the duty…” to clean up the H-1B program that, the authors correctly emphasize, allows big business to earn billions of dollars by, in part, stealing from employees through wage underpayment.

The H-1B and many other guest worker programs don’t have the necessary safeguards to protect either immigrant or U.S. workers. Some programs, like the H-1B or its cousin the L-1 for international transfers, are designed for the high-skilled worker. Other programs were created for low-skilled workers. That includes the H-2A for agricultural workers or H-2B for seasonal, non-ag workers. All categories of temporary or guest worker programs employ international laborers who are at their new employers’ mercy – an open invitation for abuse should unscrupulous employers choose to take advantage when safeguards are missing.

Protections are paramount since the H-1B is the largest temporary work visa program with nearly 600,000 workers currently employment-authorized in the U.S. and approximately 140,000 new guest workers who will receive visas for fiscal year 2023, and still another 300,000 receiving three-year renewals.

Assuming labor protections and a fair pay scale for the vastly underpaid foreign-born workers were in place, and enforced, hiring H-1Bs would become less appealing to employers who would eventually turn to U.S. tech workers.

Hira, Costa and Salzman make the important observation that in today’s corporate world, labor safeguards are more vital than ever. Since 1990, corporations have moved ruthlessly to slash labor costs, cut pensions, hire short-term contract workers to replace full-time employees and bust unions.

Legislative reform, no matter how desperately needed, is a long-shot. Biden is president in large part because Silicon Valley worked tirelessly on his behalf, and dumped $5 million into his 2020 campaign coffers. On the other hand, protecting American workers and at-risk guest workers is one of the most necessary functions of the Executive Office. Even though taking a pro-America stance on visa reform would give Biden a much-needed bump in his poll ratings, it is improbable that Biden is brave enough to stand up to his advisors and Silicon Valley donors.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Follow him on joeguzzardi.substack.com.

New Batch of H-1B Workers Arriving Soon

Afghan Evac Flaws Cautionary Lesson For Ukraine

By Joe Guzzardi

More alarming details have come to light about how badly the Biden administration botched the Afghan evacuation. Instead of taking a deep breath, and committing itself to a more prudent – and legal – approach to resettlement and asylum, President Biden is jumping in feet first with the Ukrainians.

First, a review of the failures associated with the Afghan airlift. Last week, the Department of Justice revealed that several Afghans had allegedly bribed a Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves in order to obtain a coveted Special Immigrant Visa. SIVs help expedite the resettlement process, and remove all possible doubt about the visa holder’s loyalty to America. Federal prosecutors filed visa fraud charges against 53-year-old Navy Reserves Commander Jeromy Pittmann of Pensacola, Fla., who wrote up more than 20 fake SIV recommendations which falsely claimed the Afghans had worked as translators for the U.S. Armed Forces. Pittman also alleged that he supervised the Afghans, a lie, and that unless they were granted SIV visas, they would be Taliban targets, and at risk for their lives. Pittmann now faces 20 years in a federal penitentiary.

Second, since August 2021, about 85,000 Afghans have been resettled in 46 states, many if not most of them improperly vetted against counterterrorism databases, a fact which Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed. A report released by the Department of Defense Inspector General harshly criticized Biden for his rushed, botched and numerically unlimited resettlement that allowed “significant security concerns” to take up U.S. residency.

DOD cannot locate at least 50 Afghans with possible terrorism ties and worries that “the U.S. government could mistakenly grant ineligible Afghan evacuees with derogatory information from the DOD Automated Biometric Identification System database SIV or parolee status.” Moreover, DOD concluded, Biden’s State Department and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services also could provide dangerous, unvetted Afghans with visas, Green Cards, and naturalized American citizenship.

Third, violent post-Kabul airlift crimes occurred almost immediately after the August 2021 airlift, proof that vetting was lax. In September 2021, the Western District of Wisconsin federal grand jury returned indictments on two Afghans that included sex acts with minors under age 16, and spousal assault by strangulation and suffocation. The perpetrators had been assigned temporary housing at Ft. McCoy, Wis., a military base that at one time housed nearly 13,000 Afghan evacuees.

The ongoing Afghan resettlement process is about eight months old, and no one can predict whether it will be successful or fraught with social and assimilation challenges much like the Somali refugees struggled with. Whatever the end result may be, Afghan resettlement is a huge, continuous and costly project that will take years to complete.

Nevertheless, the Biden administration is ready to embark on expedited processing of Afghan refugees “with open arms” even though the legal steps are years long, and cumbersome. But since the Biden administration’s indifference to immigration law is well-known internationally, some wealthy Ukrainians have decided to forego refugee status, and instead file asylum claims inside the U.S. after traveling through “safe countries” on route, and then getting past border officials.

Regulations require that asylum seekers must make their claim in the first safe country they reach, Poland, for instance. And Article 31 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees stated specifically that illegal aliens or migrants cannot be denied the chance to seek asylum as long as they are “coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened.”

Recently, a group of Ukrainian migrants arrived at San Ysidro, Mexico, an international point of entry. But even though the Mexican government declared that special and immediate treatment will be given to migrants or people arriving from Ukraine for asylum purposes, the migrants’ destination is the U.S. Asylum claims should be denied to petitioners who pass through safe countries to reach the U.S.

Enforcing the safe country concept doesn’t mean that the U.S. will turn its back on migrants in danger. The idea instead is that instead of continuing what might be a perilous journey that covers hundreds of miles, for those truly in peril, the first safe haven may be the best place to begin a new life. Biden’s task is to enforce the safe country concept to ensure that Ukrainian or other asylum seekers don’t take unfair, undeserved advantage of U.S. generosity.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org

Afghan Evac Flaws Cautionary Lesson For Ukraine