OK, I'm kidding. I got into trouble a couple of weeks ago with my snarky diary
Paul Krugman is a Racist. So, for this post, I'll keep it straight.
Last week, Senator Specter implied that anyone who opposes the H-1B visa must not like immigrants, especially immigrants from India and China:
House GOP hews to its tough line on immigration - Senate hearings set to highlight bill's perceived flaws
The Chinese Exclusion Act in the 19th century and hostility to Italians and Jews in the early 20th century followed large migrations of those groups, he [Specter] said, noting current efforts to limit Chinese and Indian immigration under the H1B program for temporary skilled workers.
But one of the Democratic party's most respected liberals Dennis Kucinich stated the following about the H-1B progam:
H-1B and L-1 Visas
The expanded use of H-1B and L-1 visas has had a negative effect on the workplace of Information Technology workers in America. It has caused a reduction in wages. It has forced workers to accept deteriorating working conditions... It has also reduced the number of IT jobs held by Americans.
Also, Sona Shaw, an Indian immigrant, was crossposted in a diary a month ago:
Vote for Justice, Integrity and Jim Webb on June 13
The foreign guest worker "business visa" (H-1b and L-1) programs so critical to Mr. Miller were ostensibly created to satisfy a short term need for skilled labor in America but they are based on a lie. That need for non-American labor never existed; it was a perception created by business lobbyists for the purpose of lowering labor costs. Qualified American workers were available to do the work and the flow of educated workers had actually increased to meet demand.
Also, Kucinich has referred to Norm Matloff in his criticism of the H-1B:
H-1B and L-1 Visas
Professor Norman Matloff of UC Davis estimates that in the spring of 2003 there were 500,000 unemployed and underemployed U.S. programmers, while there were 463,000 H-1B workers employed in the field.
For the past 13 years, Norm Matloff has fought the industry lobbyists who have been pushing these visas. Throughout this period, he has given Congressional testimony, regularly sent out isses of his e-newsletter (H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter), given numerous interviews, and has written reams on the subject. Here's a quote from an article in April, 2005:
The H-1B visa issue revisited
I put that question to Norman Matloff, professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis. "It boils down to cheap labor," he says. Matloff says that there are many ways to underpay H-1B workers.
Matloff is married to a Chinese immigrant, speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese, and has defended immigrant rights on several occassions, most notably an instance in which a Chinese immigrant (Wen Ho Lee) was accused of industrial espionage at a Los Alamos laboratory.
According to www.BetterImmigration.com ...
Unnecessary Guest Worker Visas
Probably the greatest damage to the wages and working conditions of American workers comes from foreign nationals who are specifically imported to compete with Americans for jobs.
Senator Arlen Specter gets an F- on this scorecard for "unnecessary work visas", which includes the H-1B visa:
www.BetterImmigration.com - Reduce Unnecessary Foreign Workers Visas - Senator Arlen Specter
Representative Dennis Kucinich gets an A+:
www.BetterImmigration.com - Reduce Unnecessary Foreign Workers Visas - Representative Dennis Kucinich
As far back as 1998, Kucinich opposed the H-1B visa:
Scoresheet to Compute Dennis Kucinich's Grade
1998: H.R.3736, opposed doubling of H-1B foreign high-tech workers. Rep. Kucinich opposed passage of H.R.3736, which ultimately increased by nearly 150,000 the number of foreign workers that high-tech American companies could hire over the next three years.
But Senator Specter wants you to believe that there is really nothing to see here. There is no complexity here that would require your little brain cells to do somersaults in order to get to the bottom of this issue. According to Specter, this is simply an issue between 2 kinds of people:
1) pro-immigrant people like Specter who celebrate America's immigrant heritage and who have great affection for immigrants
2) anti-immigrant people like Kucinich, Sona Shaw, and Matloff who just plain don't like immigrants
Here's what Norm Matloff said of Specter in a recent issue of his newsletter H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter archive - (This recent issue is not yet in the archives.)
Sen. Specter stated that critics of the H-1B program are motivated by racism. By implication, he seems to feel that programmers don't mind losing their jobs to H-1Bs as long as the H-1Bs are white. When someone loses his job and can't pay the mortgage, they don't care what color the replacement worker is.
ZaZona.com - Get the Facts on Nonimmigrant Work Visas
Although about half of H-1B visas are used in the tech industry, employers also use H-1B visas to cheapen the labor force in many other professions (e.g. nursing, teaching) that require a college degree. There is an annual cap of 65,000, but each visa lasts 6 years and they can be renewed indefinitely. Furthermore, there's about an extra 70,000 visas issued that are exempt from the cap, which brings the annual total to well over 100,000. To put this in perspective, our current economy is barely wheezing out 150,000 new jobs per month.
ZaZona.com - Are Many H-1Bs Exempted From the Yearly Limit?
Not counted against the H-1B cap are applications for H-1B visas for employees of higher educational institutions, their related or affiliated nonprofit entities. K-12 schools are not exempted. Other exempt categories include applications for individuals employed by nonprofit research organizations or governmental research organizations, or by any nonprofit entity which engages in clinical training of students at higher educational institutions. Physicians who have received a J-1 Conrad 20 waiver of the two-year home residency requirement and who must work for three years in H status are also exempt from the cap.
Some Lost Jobs Never Leave Home, Skilled Foreigners Flow In to Fill Them - May 2, 2004 - By Jessica Vaughan
Like IT professionals, American nurses and teachers are starting to feel the pinch from foreign competition. The health care and education establishments, much like the IT industry, say they need guest worker programs to address a shortage of U.S. workers, which is admittedly a problem. The U.S. Labor Department calls nursing, for instance, a 'permanent shortage profession.' But the interest in foreign guest workers goes beyond the need to make up a shortage. It's also about cost. Stephanie Tabone, of the Texas Nurses Association, charges that hospitals choose to hire foreign nurses to avoid improving working conditions and raising pay for American nurses. 'Hospitals can bring in even very experienced nurses from abroad, and call them entry level, so they can get away with paying them less,' she says."
Also, the corporate lobbyists are constantly trying to sneak visa increases into legislation. For example, the Senate's comprehensive immigration bill (S 2611) that was passed this year (and sponsored by Specter) included a provision to nearly double the number of H-1B visas issued on an annual basis (from 65,000 to 115,000). But since the Senate bill is not going to make it into law, there's a new push to expand visas in the "SKIL" bills (HR 5744) and (S 2691). It's likely that these bills will be quietly enacted in December, safely after the elections.
Congress Grades: Reduce Unnecessary Guest Worker Visas (recent) ..... U.S. House ..... U.S. Senate