Immigration Bill

Bad News for College Grads 

Washington, DC –The so-called comprehensive immigration bill makes college graduates with math, science and engineering degrees likely to be counted among the losers.  The U.S. Senate and the White House propose increasing the number of H-1B high-tech visas to give new grads’ jobs away. 

Paul E. Almeida, President of the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO (DPE), said:  “If you are soon to be a college graduate interested in computer or information science, math and engineering, or are parents helping your children get one of these degrees, you should ask your Senator how expanding the number of H-1B visas will be good for you.” 

According to the U.S. Department of Education and the Computing Research Association, U.S. students have answered the call to major in the core disciplines critical to the high-tech industry.  U.S. colleges and universities are graduating over 300,000 students each year with bachelors, masters or PhDs in computer or information science, math and engineering.  At current rates, the supply of graduates will exceed the Department of Labor’s projections for average yearly high tech job creation over the next eight years – expected to reach barely 120,000 jobs yearly. 

The justification for a massive expansion of the H-1B program is industry’s claim of widespread and pervasive shortages of qualified workers.  No independent, unbiased, statistical evidence substantiates their claims.  If shortages existed, IT wages should have escalated sharply.  They haven't.  

In a Congressionally-mandated study released soon after Congress passed S.2045, the National Research Council — the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering — found "the current size of the H-1B workforce relative to the overall number of IT professionals is large enough to keep wages from rising as fast as might be expected in a tight labor market."  It also found "no analytical basis on which to set the proper level of H-1B visas ...  [D]ecisions to reduce or increase the cap on such visas are fundamentally political." 

Almeida commented:  “If there were truly a need for the best and the brightest to receive an H-1B visa, deciding who receives them wouldn’t be done by a lottery, as it is now.  H-1B visas wouldn’t be issued to hotel managers, farm managers, hotel front office supervisors, and restaurant managers, as is the case.  Business argues that it needs to attract the best and the brightest.  When Congress proposed a merit-based system, though, business was against that, too.  Businesses want who they want at the price they want to pay.  That is the only thing that will make them happy.” 

DPE applauds Senators Durbin and Grassley for pushing to include key policy reforms: applying more stringent requirements to employers who import H-1B workers and enhancing audit authority for the Department of Labor to ensure that workers’ rights are protected and bad-apple employers are held accountable.   

For more facts and figures on the H-1B visa and tech workers go to: http://www.dpeaflcio.org/programs/factsheets/fs_2007_h1b.htm. 

             The Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO (DPE) is a coalition of 23 national unions representing over four million highly skilled, white-collar employees. DPE unions include professionals in over three hundred separate and distinct occupations in many sectors including:  science, engineering and technology; health care and education; journalism, entertainment and the arts; public administration and law enforcement.  DPE is the largest association of professional and technical workers in the U.S.

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