To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter 182

Computerworld has been covering H-1B and related issues quite
thoroughly since 1999.  The editor at that time was skeptical when he
saw the industry lobbyists screaming that there was a tech labor
shortage, as his wife couldn't get a job as a teacher even while the
Boston-area papers were claiming a teacher shortage.

Here I'll comment on two items, one by recent Computerworld
Editor-in-Chief Don Tennant and the other a new article in the
publication.  (To save time, I'm just including URLs, which is just as
well as there are interesting links on these sites.)

I've praised Tennant in this e-newsletter for being open-minded in spite
of having, I surmise, come in to the H-1B topic with biases in favor of
the program.  I believe he originally bought into the "best and
brightest" claims of the industry lobbyists, which as I've shown before
apply only to a very small percentage of foreign tech workers.  See my
earlier comments at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/CWEditor.txt
and http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/AronDebate.txt

In a recent pair of blog postings, the second of which is at

www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/tennant/we-owe-it-to-our-kids-to-get-over-the-h-1b-hang-up/?cs=38351

Tennant wonders why he hears of workers in the tech field advising their
children not to pursue tech careers.  After all, Tennant says, even a
generous accounting would find that only 35% of IT workers are H-1Bs,
which leaves 65%, i.e.  plenty of jobs. 

I'll use that 35% figure here for ease of exposition (it's an
overestimate for many reasons).  But Tennant is missing the point in
several different ways:

   * That 35% doesn't include FORMER H-1B workers who now have green
     cards.  To be sure, I've always said they should be protected just
     like the natives, but the point is that if there had not been a
     H-1B program most of them would not be in the current labor market.

   * The 35% figure is large in terms of its dampening effect on IT
     wages.  Some of you may recall that even the mainly pro-industry
     NRC report in 2000 made the same observation.

   * The 35% figure is large in that it enables employers to shun the
     older (age 35+) American workers.  (Which renders irrelevant
     Tennant's comment about jobs opening as baby boomers retire.)

   * IT is a very, very broad field.  Only a minority of IT jobs are
     typically filled by computer science graduates (the field Tennant
     cites), BUT H-1Bs almost exclusively work in such jobs.  In other
     words, the impact on CS grads of the H-1B program is much more
     acute than on IT jobs as a whole. 

The notion that children of tech workers are shunning tech fields is
real.  Even if the parents actually encourage their kids to go into
tech, the kids have seen up close how unstable the field is, and how
vulnerable it is to H-1B and offshoring.  Note that THIS IS THE CASE
EVEN IF THE PARENTS ORIGINALLY CAME HERE AS H-1BS OR FOREIGN STUDENTS.
The Wall Street Journal even did a piece on this; see
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/DisappointedParents.txt

The second item I'll discuss here is the current Computerworld article,
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142806/Court_orders_three_H_1B_sites_disabled

Reportedly an H-1B worker publicly ratted on his employer Apex, an
Indian body shop, for making him sign a contract which illegally bound
him to indentured servitude.  "IT Grunt," who anonymously operates Web
sites critical of H-1B, references the worker's Web page.  Apex is now
suing ITG for allegedly defaming the firm, and has gotten a judge to
temporarily shut down part of ITG's Web operations.

To me it does seem reasonable to shut a site down, pending litigation,
if there is reasonable evidence of defamation.  But I don't think there
is much evidence of that, raising the possibility that this is just a
nuisance lawsuit against critics of H-1B, in which case one wonders how
the judge decided the way he did.  In addition, this could open quite a
Pandora's Box, with those who've posted on the site possibly subject to
exposure.

I would add, though, that to me this shows once again how the anti-H-1B
activists are shooting themselves in the foot by concentrating on (a)
violations of the law and (b) Indian "body shops" (rent-a-programmer
businesses).  As I've said before, (a) is the wrong way to go, because
most abuses of the H-1B program and fully legal uses of loopholes, and
(b) is wrong because the mainstream firms are just as culpable as the
Indian body shops.

Norm