H-1B: The Propaganda of Profiteers

The argument against increasing the H-1B visa is threefold.

• The first argument is that H-1B visa increases are unjustified in the employment records, the Bureau of Labor Statics occupational data, employment level increases are congruent with NCES college graduation levels for citizens and permanent residents.

• The second argument against the H-1B visa, is that it annually authorizes as much as 9,180,000 months of future employment to temporary foreign workers in the first term and another  9,180,000 months in the second term.  In other words, each Fiscal Year begins with the destruction of 510,000 work-years made unavailable to citizens and permanent residents, regardless to the health of the economy.  A currently proposed H-1B increase, would bring that number to 1,170,000 work-years, each and every year.  Roughly, the first 100,000 new jobs per month would service the H-1B program alone, before any citizen or permanent resident found new employment.

• The third argument against the H-1B visa, is that the most prominent employers specialize in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). Not only does BPO specialize in moving technical employment offshore, BPO also moves the ancillary employment offshore along with it and H-1B visa workers are employed to facilitate that offshore flow.      

In a country, like the U.S., which pays its obligations primarily from personal income-tax receipts, allowing carpetbaggers to dilute the labor force, with redundant occupational capabilities makes no sense. Turning a blind-eye to the relocation of technical resources and ancillary employment beyond the taxable jurisdiction through BPO, is the equivalent to facilitating industrial espionage. Sadly, many of our legislators have been fooled by lobbyists and junk-science, without examining who profits from the process.

H-1B: Who Profits? 

The Colleges: Working through the government, the colleges have an inside-track to the immigration system through the student visa program(s).  The colleges found that they could increase demand and charge a higher fee for their product by increasing foreign student enrollment. In fact, out of state tuition (applicable to foreign students) average 229% higher than in state tuition.

The average resident tuition and fees in the 2014-2015 academic year is $8,794, according to data reported by 413 ranked public colleges in an annual survey by U.S. News.
[...]
Among all ranked public schools reporting data to U.S. News, out-of-state tuition and fees average $20,105.
-- US News, "10 Public Colleges With the Cheapest Out-of-State Tuition and Fees,"  Sept. 30, 2014

The colleges, have found that lobbying for temporary visas, like the H-1B and others, adds desirability to their foreign-student offerings when the probability of gaining work-experience in the United States is increased.

The Immigration Lawyers: The American Immigration Lawyers Association is a lobbying group that profits handsomely from the temporary visa programs.  Cash-strapped family and refugee immigrants are generally unlikely to be able to afford customary attorney's fees.  Employers however, consider attorney's fees as a cost of doing business.  Immigration attorney fees, without complications, for H-1Bs are $2500.00 at the low end, for the 124,326 initial H-1B authorized in 2014, attorney fees would be about $310,815,000.00.

The Personnel/Placement Agencies:  Much of the technical specialty industry is project based and funded, as such, many employment agreement are six-months in duration.  Six months of commission is probably the break-even point for personnel agencies and serves as an evaluation period for the employer before deciding to continue with the candidate.

In a free-market, the employee and employer are free to negotiate a direct employment contract and the personnel agency has served its function. Alternately, an H-1B employee, not willing take a risk with her non-immigrant status, is much more likely to fall into a longer-term arrangement, with the personnel agency, thus this employee will tend to yield three to six years of commissions for the personnel agency.

The appearance of a labor shortage and preference for temporary foreign workers is due to a financial windfall. If there is a possibility of placing a candidate, indentured by H-1B status, all qualified citizen and permanent resident resumes will not be presented, creating the appearance of a shortage.

Business Process Outsourcing:  There is a tendency in the media to suggest that H-1B demand has some correlation to the number of applications.  For instance, in FY 2014, there were 250,442, H-1B Labor Condition Applications (LCA) for filed for the Computer Systems Analyst occupation.  This occupation only grew by 21,220 from 2013 to 2014, obviously 229,222 (91.5%), of these "jobs" that were being applied for, never existed.



Carpetbaggers are going to do what carpetbaggers do, but there is no reason to help them do it.