Senator Hatch: Immigration Reform On Hold, National Debt Not Debilitating
Feb 20, 2008 by Elizabeth Ziegler
(KCPW News) U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch addressed concerns about the federal government's immigration policy and mounting national debt during a visit to the Utah Legislature Tuesday. Hatch says he doubts Congress will consider passing comprehensive immigration reform until after the new President is inaugurated. However, he says there are a few policies Congress could address this year.
"One of the more important things that I think might get through this year, is we need to expand the H1B program so we can keep these PhD's who get their education here and want to stay here and want to help us maintain our world-wide leadership as the high-tech capitol of the world," Hatch says.
In addition to expanding the H-1B visa program, he says Congress might also consider this year improving the technology used in border crossings, including the use of biometric cards. When asked about the national debt, Hatch admits he's concerned, but says the nation's economy is still growing.
"I don't think we should be in despair," Hatch says. "This still is the greatest country in the world. We're still the greatest economy in the world. But it's amazing, we've gone from being absolutely dominant in the world to where we are still dominant, we're just not absolutely dominant. And I think we've got to watch that."
Hatch says he is pleased that Utah's economy remains strong, which he credited, in part, to the Legislature. Hatch also spoke briefly about health care reform efforts in Congress, mortgage lending practices and the Protect America Act, which aimed to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act but stalled in the House. Find a podcast of Senator Hatch's entire address to the Utah Legislature below:
Email to a friendPosted in KCPW Newsroom. Copyright 2008 KCPW
1. Ivan said:
It is a shame that the racists in this country prevented a meaningful immigration reform last summer. Now, we are going to have to wait until Obama, Hillary, or McCain step in and provide leadership for this much needed reform. The GOP will get punished in November for their hatred and refusal to deal with the issue in a pragmatic way.
3. Bruce de la Vega said:
Yes, the E-3, F, H-1B, J, and L visa programs need to be reformed. First, cut the numbers of visas so that more of the bright, well-educated US citizens can be brought back from cat-sitting to something resembling full employment of their skills. It's a terrible waste to subsidize the educations of foreign students, make it more difficult for US students to succeed, and then destroy the careers of US students who had succeeded, while transferring knowledge and research techniques and capital equipment outside of the USA.
The base limit on H-1B visas is a vastly excessive 65K, the total limit is over 85K, broken down as follows:1,400 nationals of Chile; 5,400 nationals of Singapore; 20,000 with master's and doctor's degrees from US colleges and universities; 58,200 with "bachelor's degrees or equivalent experience" from any hole-in-the-wall in the world; unlimited visas for those employed by non-profit research outfits; unlimited visas for those employed for local, state and federal research; unlimited visas for those employed by US colleges & universities.
If they were for the "highly skilled" "best and brightest" a more reasonable cap would be a hard 2K visas in use at any one time. The numbers actually approved and the numbers of visas issued have been quite a bit above those numbers according to USCIS and State Department data.
H-1B visas approved (USCIS):year Initial renewed+extended total1999 134,411 na na2000 136,787 120,853 257,6402001 201,079 130,127 331,2062002 103,584 93,953 197,5372003 105,314 112,026 217,3402004 130,497 156,921 287,4182005 116,927 150,204 267,131
H-1B visas issued (DoS):1996 58,3271997 80,5471998 91,3601999 116,5132000 133,2902001 161,6432002 118,3522003 107,1962004 138,9772005 124,3742006 135,861
There is no requirement that H-1B visa applicants be "highly skilled". Indeed, 56% of applications filed are for H-1B workers with the lowest skill level (level 1 of 4). Hundreds are issued each year to those lacking the equivalent of a US high school education. With a few welcome exceptions, these are not "best and brightest" individuals, but ordinary people doing ordinary jobs for which the USA has been producing an excess of US citizen talent for decades.
These elevated numbers of E-3, F, H-1B, J, and L-1 visas have been being used to drive down compensation, to facilitate off-shoring, and to facilitate age discrimination. H-1B visa holders are, on average, legally paid well below prevailing local market compensation for their experience and credentials and the job they are doing.
Indeed, NSF in a report drafted in the 1980s, lobbied for an increase in F visas and the creation of the H-1B program in order to drive down compensation to US citizens. The NSF stated: "A growing influx of foreign PhDs into U.S. labor markets will hold down the level of PhD salaries to the extent that foreign students are attracted to U.S. doctoral programs as a way of immigrating to the U.S.A. A related point is that for this group the PhD salary premium is much higher [than it is for Americans], because it is based on BS-level pay in students' home nations versus PhD-level pay in the U.S.A... [If] doctoral studies are failing to appeal to a large (or growing) percentage of the best citizen baccalaureates, then a key issue is pay... A number of [the Americans] will select alternative career paths... For these baccalaureates, the effective premium for acquiring a PhD may actually be negative."
While H-1B visa holders can legally change employers while retaining their visas, the small fraction of H-1B visa holders who have pending green card applications would suffer a set-back if they changed employers. H-1B visas have an initial use period of at most 3 years, an additional 3 years with renewal, and year-to-year extensions.
US Department of Labor's Strategic Plan on page 35 states:"H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker."http://www.dol.gov/_sec/stratplan/strat_plan_2006_2011.pdfhttp://programmersguild.blogspot.com/2007/04/news-flash-corporate-executives-and.html
The Federal Register 2006-06-30, Sec. 2, paragraph 4: "the statute does not require employers... to demonstrate that there are no available US workers or to test the labor market for US workers as required under the permanent labor certification program."
(sources: RAND Corp., Urban Institute, Sloan Foundation, Harvard, Duke, Georgetown, Rochester Institute of Technology, NCES, BLS, USCIS, DoL, DoS, NSF.)
http://www.kermitrose.com/jgoEconData.htmlhttp://www.kermitrose.com/econ200711.htmlhttp://travel.state.gov/pdf/FY06AnnualReportTableXVIA.pdfCharacteristics of Specialty Occupation Workers (various years)
4. Cohen said:
The gentleman above, de la Vega, is one of the reasons as to why US is struggling to compete with the rest of the world. I don't care that Billy Bobb is lazy and dumb. If he is, just because he is American, he will remain unemployed. It is that simple. The H-1B quota must disappear! It is artificial and unnecessary. Here goes Billy Bobb's argument that he is for "legal immigration" and against "illegal immigration". How is tat the case when you want to isolate the country from the rest of the world. Breaking news: that is impossible. We live in the XXI century. Go back to school, improve your credentials, or lose. Darwin, anybody?
2. Sergi said:
H1B program needs reforms. H1B visa program is temporary visa program where highly skilled immigrants work in this country legally and pay taxes. The bad part is that although we pay social security and medicare taxes - we do not get any social security or medicare benefits when we return to our home countries.
The current limit of H1B visas is too low. Last year the visas were filled in one day and there was a "lottery system" based on which these highly skilled workers got or were rejected visas.
These folks want to work legally in the US and reforms should be made to allow them to.
In addition, there should be reforms for stricter enforcement of minimum wages to make sure that H1B work does not replace the American worker by accepting lower wages.