It is a dream come true for American workers. No longer can companies operating in the United States bring in cheaper foreign labor. The U.S. Senate approved a new immigration law called the Y-1 visa guest workers program and nicknamed "Recruit Americans First."
The law passed on June 5 with 71 senators for and 22 senator against. Among those who voted against the Y-1 program were Sens. John W. Warner (R-VA), Wayne A. Allard (R-CO), and John Cornyn (R-TX). This guest workers program allows a total of 400,000 temporary workers into the country.
The fathers of this new law are U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA).
This law closed a loophole that was extensively used to bring cheap, foreign labor into the United States. Most importantly, the foreign worker may not be paid less than a U.S. worker would earn and must leave the U.S. after exactly two years, or may not be able to return to the United States under any other foreign workers programs in the future.
This new law also ties the hands of the U.S. secretary of labor, who can no longer waive the requirement to recruit an American worker first with the declaration that there is a labor shortage within a particular industry. In the past, the secretary of labor could declare a "labor shortage" in any kind of U.S. industry at will because this phrase was not clearly defined.
Extensive lobbying by firms operating in the United States influenced the interpretation of a labor shortage. Once the term "labor shortage" was declared for certain types of work, such as computer programmers, the firm could immediately hire cheaper workers from foreign countries without trying to find U.S. workers with equal skills.
Sen. Durbin found many loopholes in U.S. immigration laws that favor hiring foreign nationals. "Throughout this entire immigration bill, there are waivers, exceptions, and ways of ducking out of such requirements [of hiring Americans first]," testified Sen. Durbin during the Senate hearing, available on the Senate Web site. "The authors of this [immigration] bill make it seem as though Americans will be recruited first."
H-1B and L-1 Visa Abuses
Sens. Durbin and Grassley were also appalled by the abuses of two other immigration programs, the H-1B and L-1 Visa. They introduced another bill onto the Senate floor, the H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007, which is currently being debated on the Senate floor.
If no U.S. citizens with similar experiences can be found, U.S. companies can hire up to 65,000 foreign professionals under the H-1B immigration visa program, including computer experts, engineers, doctors, and nurses, for up to six years. Lower- and higher-level managers with special skills can be brought to the United States under the L-1 visa program for up to seven years.
The senators claim that as soon as the Senate approves this new law, companies have to prove almost beyond a shadow of a doubt that they could not find equally qualified workers among U.S. citizens.
Sen. Durbin said, "The bill also cracks down on unscrupulous employers who deprive qualified Americans of high-skill jobs," according to a recent press release from the senator's office.
Sen. Durbin testified during recent Senate hearings that Indian companies use the H-1B visa to train Indian engineers in the United States for three to six years. These engineers then return to India and work for competitors of U.S. companies after having learned American know-how. This is called "outsourcing visas," said Sen. Durbin during the Senate hearings published on the Senate Web site http://www.uscc.gov/.
Sen. Durbin testified: "There are some companies that are gaming the system. There have been exposés across America about these so-called H-1B brokerage houses. These are not high-tech companies looking for people with H-1B visas. These are companies, by and large in India, that try to bring in Indian engineers to fill the jobs in the United States."
Sens. Durbin and Grassley sent inquiries about use of the H-1B program to nine of the largest foreign companies operating in the United States, including Larsen and Toubro Limited, Infosys Technologies, Wipro Technologies, and Tata Consultancy Services. These companies had hired about 20,000 H-1B holders during 2006.
The senators claim that the H-1B and L-1 programs are used to import cheaper professionals, train them, and then send them back to their home countries along with the job they occupied. "Too many H-1B visas are being used to facilitate the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries," Sen. Durbin said.
India Weighs In
India's government is not happy, and Shri Kamal Nath, Union Minister of Commerce and Industry warned that restrictions to the H-B1 visa could adversely affect relations between the United States and India.
Reflecting the level of concern in India, Kamal Nath warned that any restriction to the H-B1 visa would have an adverse impact on the World Trade Organization (WTO) service negotiations going on at this time.
According to an article by the RiskCenter, a Web-based service for financial risk professionals, Nascom, a trade group of Indian outsourcing companies, in a recent letter, warned senators of the dire consequences to business and of retaliatory actions between India and the United States should H-B1 and L-1 restrictions be approved by the Senate.
The senators' investigation is "really insulting," said Ron Somers, president of the U.S.-India Business Council, according to the RiskCenter article.
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