USA Today
September 21, 2000

Opinion Forum:
Imported tech workers
Do high-tech firms really need imported workers?

Yes

By Scott McNealy


It's easy to feel comfortable, with the country enjoying the longest period
of economic growth in its history. Easy, too, to feel good about the
contributions of the high-tech industry, where I make my living. After all,
America's record-setting run - the incredible job growth and productivity
gains - dates back to 1995, just when the Internet was starting to hit its
stride.


That's why I'm worried. It would be all too easy to screw this up.


America is clearly in the lead when it comes to high-tech prowess and
inventiveness, but that lead has not been bestowed upon us as a birthright.
We have to continue to earn it every day by moving faster, dreaming bigger
and working harder than the competition.


This is where the casual observer might ask, "So what's stopping you? Go do
your job."


One small problem: We need more qualified workers. A lot more. And right
away. We need people who dream in bits and bytes, people who have a gift for
computer code and circuits.


Unfortunately, there just aren't enough of them in this country right now.


The shortage is dramatic: Hundreds of thousands of highly skilled jobs are
going unfilled. The time to address this critical problem is now.


The first order of business is for Congress to pass responsible legislation
to raise the cap on H-1B visas for qualified foreign workers. These
temporary visas allow highly skilled foreign nationals to work in this
country for up to six years.


What makes the shortage even worse is that we soon will be losing valuable
employees by the tens of thousands, as their temporary visas expire and
their green-card applications languish in enormous processing backlogs.


In essence, we will be deporting valuable workers at a time when our growing
economy needs them most. As Congress winds down toward adjournment, a
stalemate would do no one any good.


People these days talk about "Internet time" - a reference to the dizzying
pace of innovation and growth in the high-tech sector. But this astounding
rate of technological development is no accident. It is being driven by
global competition, which is both relentless and ferocious.


It makes no sense to educate and train foreign students in American
universities, only to wind up sending those valuable individuals back
overseas to compete against us.


Truth be told, the contributions of skilled workers born outside the United
States help us create a growing number of high-paying jobs for Americans.
That's especially apparent at Sun Microsystems, because two of its
co-founders, Andy Bechtolsheim and Vinod Khosla, were foreign nationals.


Another great example: James Gosling, a Canadian national, developed one of
our best-known technologies, the Java platform, which has revolutionized
software development.


Do we really want to turn away the next Bechtolsheim, the next Khosla, the
next Gosling - and with them the many jobs and technical advances their work
generates?


That's exactly what is happening today - and has been happening since March
21, when we reached the current annual cap on H-1B visas.


The long-term strategy is, of course, providing better education and
training for the U.S. workforce. Indeed, industry already is spending
billions on education at all levels, investing in a generation of workers
whose training will take years.


In the meantime, we have a large and growing gap to fill and only one way to
fill it: expand the H-1B visa program.


Time is critical. Congress and the White House need to get this done before
the end of the congressional session next month.


While we are stuck in neutral, our global competitors will be charging
ahead.


My company, for one, will continue stretching the bounds of what is possible
- using technology to improve the way people do business, communicate with
one another and run their lives.


This work is going to be done. The only question is where.


Scott McNealy is chairman and chief executive of Sun Microsystems Inc.

No

By John Miano


In recent years, news reports across the country have cited studies that
claim there is a huge shortage of workers in the technology industry. These
claims have been repeated so often that they have become "fact" to many
people.


What the public does not realize is that, in most cases, the groups putting
out these studies are the same ones who are lobbying to allow more foreign
workers into the country. These groups contend that if they can't import
more foreign programmers, the new economy may collapse.


Let's not be too hasty. Congress' General Accounting Office (GAO), which
recently analyzed various studies that estimated shortages between 700,000
and 190,000, concluded that "more information is needed to characterize the
(information technology) labor market and determine the extent of any
shortage."


If the shortage is suspect, what do these employers really want?


They want cheap programmers from other countries. I'll start believing there
is a shortage when programmer salaries start rising half as fast as CEO
salaries, or when I see half as many African-Americans at work as H-1B
workers.


Recently, I responded to two dozen job postings on the Web. Only one company
got back to me, but said I was "overqualified." That kind of response does
not suggest a desperate programmer shortage.


What should outrage Americans is the industry's solution to its mythical
labor shortage: the H-1B visa program. These visas allow employers to import
temporary workers in "specialty occupations" for up to six years. That
sounds innocent enough, but the details should concern you. The law, for
example, contains a loophole that allows employers to fire hard-working
American workers and replace them with foreign workers.


I learned of the H-1B program after cleaning up the widely reported mess at
American International Group (AIG), a company that fired its programming
staff and replaced it with foreign workers. By using lower-paid H-1B
workers, AIG expected to save millions of dollars a year. But the foreign
programmers were incompetent, so the firm saved nothing.


What it did is perfectly legal. Supporters tell us H-1B can't be used for
cheap labor because H-1B workers have to be paid the prevailing wage. They
neglect to mention that the employer determines the prevailing wage. The
government, as GAO reported, can "initiate investigations to address
potential (abuse) only if narrowly restricted circumstances are met."


When you have a system designed to be abused with impunity, it generates
high demand. H-1B was originally limited to 65,000 visas a year, but was
raised to 115,000 in 1998. Now lobbyists are demanding this be increased to
200,000.


H-1B is simply a welfare program for wealthy campaign contributors that
should be ended. But despite the audits documenting abuse, calls from
government officials to clean things up and the opposition of 84% of
Americans to the program, Congress has refused to do anything but grovel for
cash. As Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., noted, "This (H-1B) is a very important
issue for the high-tech executives who give the money."


Americans need to realize the depth to which money has corrupted Congress,
and act accordingly at the ballot box Nov. 7. They also should lobby members
of Congress to vote against the H-1B visa legislation.



John Miano is a software programmer, a writer of programming books and
chairman of the Programmers Guild, an organization that is not a labor
union.