The United States has a class of immigrants commonly known as H-1B visa holders. They typically work in Information Technology, education, economics, science, medicine, engineering, accounting and other professional fields.
They become significant tax producers, they have a grip on the English language, they stay out of trouble, they contribute to society and they hold very good jobs. Why would anyone want to get rid of that kind of immigrant? The short answer is that almost nobody wants to get rid of that kind of immigrant. The more complex answer involves the nature of the H-1B program and how it throws a monkey wrench into the wage market of professional fields throughout the economy.
When the issue of immigration comes up, you can gauge the speaker’s motives, and even their intelligence, by how they begin. If a person is concerned about people coming into the United States illegally and committing crimes or becoming a burden through the welfare system, that is certainly a valid opinion. They might continue to say that illegal immigration brings uneducated criminal liabilities into this country. With the presence of illegal aliens, employers engage in illegal and immoral hiring practices that take jobs from Americans and torpedoes wage scales to the bottom of the ocean.
While this argument very often leads to hate and all too frequently comes from ignorance, legitimate immigration policy options can be built from this position. This same hypothetical person, prior to September 11th anyway, will probably demand sensible immigration policies that bring educated and productive people into America.
To borrow the words of pseudo-sincerity from our president: I understand this position and I respect it.
Sensible is only sensible as long as sensible does not really exist. The minute that something sensible comes into being, true colors reveal themselves and sensible policy morphs into fronts for fraud or foils for terrorism. Whatever sensible was in theory, it will be conveniently forgotten and turned into a new source of evil for the xenophobic clod that is really just against everything about immigration.
The H-1B program took flight in the early ’90s during the great bull market to meet demand for high-tech workers when universities and vocational schools could not keep up. That, unfortunately, tarnishes the reputation of H-1B visa holders in the eyes of most Americans that have a vague awareness of how to spell “Immigration.”
H-1B workers are highly educated and rarely face any kind of persecution in their homeland. They come a nice enough life to come to America for what is arguably upper crust, upper-middle-class employment. H-1B visa holders work under a six year contract at the median income of their occupation. If they do not have a green card when the contract is expired, they are expected to leave. The people that criticize the program and resent the H-1B visa holders are not your usual crowd of anti Mexican, Ross Perot worshiping, educationally challenged rednecks. They hold advanced degrees and they make a pretty good argument that immigrants really are taking their jobs.
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A more accurate description of how H-1B workers screw up the U.S. job market is that they are just following the rules and making the best of outright exploitation by cheapskate companies with legislative and executive branch connections. H-1B is classified as corporate sponsorship. Such a status gives one of two possibilities for imported scientific and technical skill:1) indentured servants or 2) mercenaries. Both possibilities are significant problems for the program and would provide sufficient cause for abolishing it.
If an H-1B visa holder is nothing more than a modern indentured servant, the U.S. government has done a huge disservice to both its own technical/scientific labor force and the high quality immigrant that is certainly qualified to have a green card instead of the hyperconditional H-1B visa. The level of education possessed by this imported labor guarantees that they will not be unemployed or burden the system through crime and welfare. These workers should be welcome to the United States to pursue their dreams and eventually become citizens, not live off a contract until the carriage turns back into a pumpkin.
If an H-1B visa holder nothing more than a corporate mercenary, the U.S. government has done a huge disservice to the existing technical/scientific labor force in the name of low salaries and high stock prices. When these immigrants are treated as mercenaries, the U.S. Government abdicates their responsibility to insure that the population has an adequate supply of Scientific and Technical Labor. Worst of all, the U.S. government opens a huge vulnerability in basic national security by letting people into the country because a campaign donor thought it would help his bottom line.
Ideally, we want people to come to America to make it a better place. H-1B workers, by and large, would make outstanding citizens. That H-1B program should be abolished and replaced with a welcome mat and a green card for everyone who can qualify under the corrupt corporate sponsorship program. The tragic fact that these people get a glorified sociopolitical version of an ordinary one night stand is a testament to the myopic, short sighted, capitalist greed that drives government and business to make the United States number one in the race to the bottom.
