| Sacramento Congressman Robert Matsui was among the majority who voted against the Watt Amendment to H.R. 3736 (an H-1B bill) in 1998 that would have forbidden U.S. firms from using temporary foreign workers to replace Americans. It also would have required U.S. firms to check a box on a form attesting that they had first sought an American worker for the job. The result was predictable - One million highly skilled U.S. workers displaced by cheap foreign labor. The DOL granted local firm Intel 8000 H-1B applications in 2002 alone, as they were laying off Americans. |
There are several programs that the Federal Government runs, visa programs, that are designed to bring more people in, to do jobs that again we are told cannot be done by Americans, by American citizens. Would my colleagues believe that we are told that there are millions of jobs going begging in the high-tech industry?
Who would believe that, Mr. Speaker? I ask my colleagues, who knows of a job available in the high-tech industry that is going begging? Because again, if my colleagues know about jobs that are available, let me know. I have a lot of people in my district who are unemployed and have been unemployed for over a year, and they ended up being a victim of that bubble that burst in the high-tech industry, and they are looking for jobs, and they would love to get reemployed into that industry. But most of them are doing something else now entirely, if they are working at all.
My friend and neighbor, it has been almost 2 years for him. He is doing some data entry for us and he is driving a limousine at night. And that is what is happening all over, of course, because people are trying to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. And they would love to get a job back in that industry. But, Mr. Speaker, we are encouraging people to come from other countries to the United States for the purpose of taking jobs in the high-tech industry. These are called H-1b visa recipients.
Now, these are folks who are not coming over here to take a job that ``no one else would take,'' although we are told that, and that is supposed to be the scheme; that is supposed to be the idea behind H-1b and something else called L-1 visa programs, but it is not true. It is not true. These people are taking jobs, they are displacing American workers, by the hundreds of thousands. There are literally millions of folks in this country today holding these kinds of visas.
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Congress was warned: FLOOR STATEMENT OF SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY
ON HIGH TECH IMMIGRATION - May 18, 1998 "Believe it or not, it is legal under current law to lay off American workers and bring in foreign workers to replace them under this program. In fact, employers are not even required to give U.S. workers first crack at these good jobs. Even if an American worker is ready, able and willing to do the job, the employer can still bring in a foreign worker to do it." www.senate.gov/~kennedy/statements/980518-a.html |
Now, we asked the INS, how many are here? No one knows how many people in this country have even come here through the H-1b visa program. The new Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Service does not know. The Department of Labor does not know. No one in government anywhere can give me an accurate number, and the reason they cannot is because they do not keep those numbers. All they know is how many they hand out, about 195,000 a year we have handed out for several years now, and that is just the H-1b, and these folks do not go home when they lose their job, although they are supposed to. They stay.
So I am saying that it is now approaching a million people, if not more, that are here under an H-1b program that are taking jobs in ``that high-tech industry that no other American would take.'' Does anybody really buy that?
What we know is that they are being given these visas because they will work for less. It is a cheap labor program.
Now, let us just say it. If that is the program we want to run, let us tell Americans that is the program. Let us not even hide it under visa titles like H-1b and things nobody has the slightest idea what H- 1b means or L-1 visas. I will tell my colleagues what it means, anybody who is listening: it is a cheap labor program. People want to pay less for labor. They know there are people outside the country who are willing to work for less, so let us get them in here.
The Organization for the Rights of American Workers, the acronym TORAW, states that in the year 2000, there were 355,000 H-1b visas issued, just in the year 2000. The cap for H-1b visas in that year was 115,000. That means that 240,000 received H-1b visas through loopholes and extensions. In 2001, 384,191 H-1b visas were issued. The cap was 107,500. That means that 276,691 people received H-1b visas through loopholes and extensions. Thus, the total amount of people who came here using H-1b visas in 2000 and 2001 totaled 739,796.
This is a program they told us would be short-lived, that it only was going to be there in order to take up the slack because we had this booming economy, we had so many jobs going begging. Has anybody heard that lately, something about a booming economy, something about jobs going begging? But 739,000 people were brought in here on H-1b visas in 2000 and 2001.
There is plenty of evidence that major American companies like Bank of America, Texas Instruments, Intel, General Electric, and Microsoft are actively recruiting today H-1b visa holders instead of American high-tech workers. Does anybody believe there are people who are not capable of these jobs; that Americans, the highest skilled, the greatest educational system in the world, touted constantly for our ability to produce the best engineers; the best people in this high- tech environment, that we are not capable, Americans cannot do the job, we have to go to India or someplace else to get the folks over here to take those jobs from us.
The San Francisco Business Times reported in November of 2002 that the Bank of America was eliminating 900 jobs by year end in its information technology operation. To add insult to injury, some of the laid-off workers were reportedly required to train their Indian counterparts in order to receive their severance packages. This is a common practice throughout the country. [One of the B of A workers committed suicide in the parking lot. - KB]
According to a survey by the Denver Business Journal, 66.5 percent of American high-tech workers who responded said they took salary reductions in 2002, and more than 71.5 percent of them expect pay cuts in 2003. According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, a company can replace an American engineer who gets paid $70,000 annually with a Hungarian who would earn $25,690 in Hungary or a Russian who gets paid $14,000 for that job in Russia. This puts companies in the position to orchestrate and control salaries. The overall effect is to decrease the salaries of all high- tech positions.
Now, we say, well, is that not appropriate? Should they not do that? Well, again, that is a policy decision that this government needs to make and needs to tell the American citizens what we are doing. Again, all I am asking is for truth in advertising. These are not special visa programs; these are not designed just to bring people in here who are in great need because the jobs are jobs our people will not do.
These are cheap labor, cheap labor policies. That is what they are, and that is what we should call them.
Now, these people are succeeding, these companies, according to the Alumni Consulting Group, because in the last 3 years, the average high- tech professional salary has dropped radically, in some cases, up to 50 percent. An online search today of the three most popular high-tech job search sites, hotjobs.com, monster.com, and dice.com, showed that they were full of jobs being offered to H-1b holders.
Now there is a new problem that is emerging, the L-1 visa. The L-1 visa program allows intracompany transfers of foreign nationals who are company executives or managers or employees with specialized knowledge of the company's products or services. It was never intended to allow companies to replace American professional employees with lower-wage foreign nationals, but guess what? That is, of course, exactly what is happening, and on a massive scale.
NBC news reported on May 8 of this year that white collar computer consultants are losing out to cheaper foreign competition. These companies are outsourcing much of their technology and customer service work to foreign companies with the goal of reducing costs and increasing profits. I would suspect that these foreign companies are using L-1 visas to bring their manpower here to the United States.
As I said before, the L-1 visa program was intended to permit multinational companies to transfer foreign nationals who were company executives and managers or employees with specialized knowledge in the company's products and operations. Instead, it is being used to allow U.S. companies with offshore subsidiaries to bring in lower-wage IT workers. These companies are circumventing the congressionally-mandated safeguards and rules imposed under the H-1b program. And our government knows it. This is not news to anybody inside the Department of Labor or inside the administration. They just do not care.
In 2001, 328,480 L-1 visas were issued, which is an increase of 11 percent. Thus, the total amount of people who came here under L-1 visas in 2000 and 2001 was 623,138.
Business Week reported on March 10 of this year that L-1 visas were being used instead of H-1b visas by India's top two IT consulting firms. Half of Tata Consultancy Services' American-based workforce are here on L-1 visas, some 5,000 foreign IT professionals. Infosys has 3,000 IT professionals here on L-1 visas, 3,000.
Now, remember, these are supposed to be people with specialized skills, so specialized, and they are overseas, they are in the company headquarters in Bombay, but there is something so special about their ability that they have to bring them over here to work in their subsidiary. That is an L-1 visa. But of course, it is not that. It is anybody and everybody who they can get into the country, get over here to replace Americans who are now driving limousines at night.
Siemens in Florida contracted to have 20 of its American IT professionals replaced by foreign nationals brought in by Tata Consultancy Services. Tata used L-1 visas to import Indians at one- third of the salary of Americans laid off.
A member of my staff is a trained IT professional. Before he started working for me, he was a victim of the very problem I was talking about. When he asked his former company why he and the rest of his IT team had been laid off, they stated they were moving their project to India. They are doing this because the average Indian software engineer makes 88 percent less than the U.S. software engineer.
Companies are not the only ones guilty of this transgression. The State of New Mexico paid a firm in India $6 million to develop an online unemployment claim system. The State of New Jersey called a call center in India to handle calls from their welfare recipients. In New Jersey, calls go to India. The State of Pennsylvania Department of Corrections utilized an offshore company to develop its mission critical systems.
All of this shifting of jobs offshore has significantly slowed the recovery of our own economy, and it is something that we should tell our people about. This is something we should be truthful about. And these are all high-tech jobs I have been talking about recently. But remember, go back to the original discussion here about the people coming in here with low-skill, low-wage backgrounds and how much we need them.
Mr. Speaker, I remember distinctly, this may be now 6 or 8 months ago, but I remember an article that I read in the Rocky Mountain Newspaper in Denver, and there was an article, it was not an ad, it was an article about a job that had been posted by a restaurant by the name of, it was called Luna Restaurant. I know it, I have been there many times; a great Mexican restaurant in north Denver.
The reason why the posting of a job became a story rather than just an ad in the paper is because it was a job for a $3-an-hour waiter; and that one job posting, that one ad produced 600 applicants the first day. That is why it turned into a story, a news story, 600 applicants for a $3-an-hour job.
Mr. Speaker, it is possible, I suppose, that every one of the 600 applicants that day were illegal aliens, but I do not think so. Maybe a large number were, but I think a lot of the people who applied for that job were American citizens who needed the work.
So this old canard about they only come into the jobs no American will take is just that, it is a falsehood. We employ these falsehoods in order to maintain open borders. Both parties support the concept. The Democrats support it because it adds to their potential pool of voters for the Democratic Party. The Republicans support it because it supports cheap labor.
I will tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, if that is the policy that our government is undertaking, then it is simply the policy we should tell our constituents about. We should explain it to them. When my colleagues get a letter like this, handwritten, three pages long, talking about what happened to them, how they were displaced by foreign workers, we should write back and say it is the policy of this government to displace you, to move you into a lower economic income category because we believe in cheap labor and we believe that the politics of open borders helps our party, in this case the Democrats, as I say. The Republicans, it is the cheap labor side of things.
That is what we tell people. That is what we should do. That is how we should respond because that is the truth of the matter; and I hope that when we have people bring bills to the floor designed to do something about jobs, which we hear over and over again, do something about jobs, I just hope that they will think about one thing they could do. There is something that we could do tomorrow to improve the quality of life for millions and millions of American citizens. There is something that we could do tomorrow that could actually add maybe 10 million jobs for American citizens, and that is to enforce our immigration laws. Stop people from coming in here illegally, deport the people who are here illegally today, and we would automatically create 10 million jobs for American citizens.
So I want that discussed every single time there is a ``jobs'' bill brought in front of this Congress, because there is an easy way to do it. There is a moral way to do it. It is immoral for us to, in fact, displace American workers with cheap labor from outside our country. It is immoral for us to tell Americans that we do not have an open borders policy because we do, and there are ramifications to it, deep, serious ramifications to open borders.
If that is what the country wants, if 50 percent plus one of this body and the other body and the President of the United States signs it, that is what we will get; but that is what we are going to get. Even that does not happen that way. We are going to get it in a de facto way. We are going to get it without ever bringing it to the attention of the American public. We are all just going to look around one day and say, gosh, what happened to our economy? What happened to the country with the highest standard of living in the world? What happened to my job? At that point, it is, of course, too late.
Mr. Speaker, I hope that we will be more truthful in the discussion of this issue, and I hope that for all of our constituents' sake that we will begin to uphold our law, begin to defend our borders and begin to, in fact, enforce immigration law.