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Richard Estrada: High-tech workers should be home-grown


09/10/99 Page 29A


By Richard Estrada / The Dallas Morning News


The information technology industry is flexing its muscles on Capitol
Hill like a Santa Monica body builder exercising on the beach. Only a
year after getting Congress to raise the cap on high-tech visas for
foreign workers from 65,000 to 115,000, industry lobbyists once again
are intimidating the 98-pound weaklings in Congress.


Phil Gramm, the bespectacled Texas Republican who once was an economics
professor, is happy to oblige. At the behest of supporters like Texas
Instruments in Dallas, the senator recently introduced a bill to raise
the cap on high-tech visas for foreign workers to 200,000.


Whether the industry would ask for an even higher cap in the future is
anybody's guess. But having achieved an increase from 65,000 to 200,000,
why not make it 300,000?


Is the act of opening wider the yawning floodgates of foreign labor
destined to help America by making the information technology industry
more competitive? Or will it undermine the national interest by sending
out signals to U.S. workers that the industry doesn't want them?


Mr. Gramm claims there is a labor shortage in areas such as computer
software programming. Because America's competitiveness is at stake, he
argues, the country must resort to much higher numbers of skilled
foreign workers to fill information technology jobs. More jobs, more
exports, more growth - it is a win-win situation all the way around,
goes the argument.


The need for more foreign workers on H-1B visas may be clear to Mr.
Gramm, but observers such as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich beg to
disagree.


"There's a lot of talent out there just waiting to be found," he
recently wrote in Computerworld magazine. While the industry is
dispatching its minions to Capitol Hill to lobby for more foreign
workers, Mr. Reich wants the industry to "create real opportunities and
career ladders" for American workers.


Mr. Reich acknowledges the problems in doing that. For example, many
critics of the H-1B program note that it is an easy way for employers to
hire younger foreign workers at salaries that look attractive to them,
while ignoring older workers who may want too much compensation and may
not be up to working extended hours. But older workers also need to
adjust and learn new skills.


Hiring younger American workers also can be problematic. Because a
career in information technology is so risky, Mr. Reich says many young
people are avoiding the field. But the answer is simple: Make the job
more attractive by making the compensation more interesting. Higher
salaries aren't the sole option. Building on the practice of giving
stock options helps, too. If a worker knows he is investing as well as
earning a salary, the job becomes more attractive simply because the
specter of being laid off isn't as daunting.


The industry also needs to do better at helping its employees keep their
skills sharp. "Move them into projects on the cutting edge," Mr. Reich
advises. "Rotate them, so they get exposed to a lot of new ideas."


Information technology employers increasingly are seeing the advantage
of training their own workers. In Omaha, they recently opened a $70
million technology and engineering institute. Instead of seeing what
kind of employees they can come up with at job fairs, they are trying to
"shape the students," as one corporate executive put it.


"But there's something I wouldn't recommend, because it's not a
long-term solution," Mr. Reich concludes. "Don't go to Washington to
fight for allowing more foreign engineers and designers to enter the
U.S. on temporary H-1B visas." He says that is a short-term palliative.
"It won't create a permanently bigger stream of [information technology]
professionals for the future."


The politics of the issue may not be as propitious for lifting the H-1B
cap as before. The cheerleader in chief last year is nowhere to be found
this time around. It seems that Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., is up for
re-election and fears a backlash for his stand on inviting more and more
foreign workers.


Mr. Reich wouldn't be surprised. That "solution" is illusory: "America's
buoyant economy is a testament to the dynamism of its [information
technology] sector. But for [the industry] to stay dynamic, more
Americans will have to become a part of it."


Richard Estrada is an associate editor of The Dallas Morning News
editorial page. His e-mail address is restrada@dallasnews.com.


©1999 The Dallas Morning News