This report was delivered to California Congressmen Doug Ose on November 19, 2002. 

In spite of 500,000 unemployed American IT workers, INS is still admitting several thousand programmers each month, displacing and replacing American workers. Employers continue to place fake job ads to get green cards for their nonimmigrant workers.

The report outlines the substantive constitutional violations in allowing foreign workers to displace and replace over 100,000 U.S. Citizens, and calls upon Congress, which is sworn to defend the constitution, to immediately:

  • Suspend the issuance of further H-1B visas
  • Suspend H-1B to permanent resident conversions
  • Repost all H-1B positions, assuring that priority be given to U.S. Workers

QUESTIONS YOUR CONGRESSMAN WON'T ANSWER

Q1: Do you support allowing U.S. employers to hire foreign workers when qualified U.S. workers are available?

FACT: Congress authorized employers to hire foreign workers -- even when qualified and equally qualified Americans are available. There is no requirement that employers consider U.S. workers before hiring a nonimmigrant. (Sacramento Congressman Matsui voted AGAINST protecting U.S. workers in the Watt Amendment in 1998.)

Q2: Do you support allowing U.S. companies to lay off U.S. workers while retaining foreign, nonimmigrant workers in the same job categories?

FACT: In October 2000, Congress almost unanimously approved H-1B legislation which had no protection from layoff and replacement for 98% of the affected American workers. Congress continues to allow this in 2003, in spite of documented abuse by Siemens, Bank of America, and dozens of other employers.

Q3: Do you support allowing U.S. employers to pay third-world wages to foreign workers who are transferred to the U.S.?

FACT: The L-1 visa permits U.S. employers, such as Oracle, to pay third-world wages to tech workers from other countries, even when they are working at U.S. sites. There is NO LIMIT on L-1 visas. Why would U.S. employers EVER hire U.S. workers?

Q4: How many Americans are unemployed due to the H-1B legislation you supported?

FACT: Approximately 500,000 highly-skilled U.S. workers are now unemployed as a direct result of Congress' H-1B visa legislation, which failed to include ANY meaningful protection for U.S. workers.

Q5: Can you cite a single employer who is unable to fill their tech positions with U.S. workers?

FACT: In September 2002, after they published a study warning of labor shortages, ITAA was wagered $1000 that they could not cite one such position within 48 hours. They declined.

 

Please phone your legislators, send them a copy of this report, and ask that IT jobs currently held by nonimmigrant, temporary workers be reopened to the 500,000 unemployed, highly qualified U.S. Citizen IT workers.

Finally, please urge your Congressman to support the American Workforce Replacement Act of 2003 (a bit of sarcasm).

Mr. Kim Berry
kimberry@justice.com

FAKE JOB ADS INTENDED TO DEFRAUD U.S. WORKERS

RESUMES OF MY UNEMPLOYED ASSOCIATES

  • Tim Mahan - Laid off in August 2002, Cannot find anything. Supports family - unemployment running out. Will relocate anywhere from Oregon to So. Cal.

More H-1B information

* This lawsuit seeks redress of violations of federal rules - as did the Sun Microsystems class action. My contention is the federal rules themselves are unconstitutional.

ATTORNEY EXPLAINS HOW TO VIOLATE CONSTITUTION

Contact:
(305) 789-9266
The 14th Amendment assures "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." Among those privileges is employment preference over nonimmigrant foreigners. In his article Legal Rejection of U.S. Workers, immigration attorney Joel Stewart explains how:

"Even in a depressed economy, employers who favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers who apply."
He insults U.S. tech workers by claiming, without reference, that many unemployed applicants "prefer to continue receiving unemployment insurance rather than begin working."

DOJ attorney Anthony Archeval confirmed that "it is legal to import foreigners to take the jobs of Americans." Anthony.F.Archeval@usdoj.gov

News since November 19, 2003

  • May 13, 2003 - Bank of America displaces 1000 programmers - one commits suicide in the parking lot. (Contra Costa Times)

  • May 3, 2003 - Visa Numbers Could Lose Global Appeal - according to DOL website, System Soft Technologies is paying the pictured H-1Bs $45-48k/year - below the average U.S. starting wage.

  • April 14, 2003: EE Times - H-1B debate flares as EE jobless rate hits 7%

  • February 10, 2003 - Ft. Worth Star-Telegram:
    As technology layoffs increase, criticism of H-1B visas mounts     "U.S. employers have been filling jobs with thousands of skilled foreign-born workers on temporary visas -- sometimes hiring in one department while workers are being laid off in others... Neither the Labor Department nor the INS requires businesses to show they've searched for American employees before they can fill jobs with H-1B holders."

  • January 2003 eWeek: L1 visa threatens both Americans and H-1B workers - According to Petereit [CEO and president of Analysts Express Inc.], in Stoneham, Mass., even his H-1B consultants live in fear of their contracts ending in this miserable economy, since large consultancies such as Tata can so easily bring in employees from India on L1 visas [paying them India wages while working in the U.S.].

    Congress: What National Interest is served by the L1 visa, which allows foreign contract agencies to import an unlimited number of foreign workers -- with the intent of either replacing American workers or transferring U.S. jobs and technology overseas?


  • Bank job: You're fired, now go train your replacement
     (San Francisco Business Times 11/22/2002) - Bank of America is cutting 900 tech positions — with the twist that some layoff victims have to help train replacements if they want to get severance pay. Dozens of Indian tech workers have been visiting BofA's major tech centers in cities around the country recently. They're getting training on work they'll do back at home for about half what departing employees are paid. The bank confirms that some laid-off workers are being required to help train new ones (and not speak to the media) as a condition of receiving severance.

  • SJ Mercury Jan 10, 2003: HP to move work to India and China - "India will play a significant role in the new HP, as well as China," said Rene Schuster, general manager of consulting and integration for Hewlett-Packard's services division.

  • A short circuit for US engineering careers - Terry Costlow 12/26/2002 | Special to The Christian Science Monitor - In 2000, near the end of the high-tech boom, industry CEOs convinced Congress to nearly double the number of H-1B visas, allowing up to 195,000 skilled workers from India and elsewhere into the US. Some engineers contend that those CEOs kept many of those H-1B workers while cutting higher-paid US citizens. "About 80,0000 engineers were unemployed a few months ago. If you take out the H-1Bs who came in, you'd have jobs for all of them," the IEEE-USA's Bryant says.

  • Time for another look at H-1B - "I have a modest proposal: Besides waiting around for the business cycle to kick in, why doesn't the federal government immediately cut the number of H-1B visa levels handed out to foreign-born workers?" - Charles Cooper Jan 10, 2003 - executive editor of commentary at CNET News.com.

  • Jan 6, 2003: Displaced U.S. Employees Frustrated, Angry At Information Technology Industry - Companies such as Aetna, ING Group and CIGNA say that they must find cheaper IT labor to keep their costs down and compete, and that Indian companies offer a well-trained and eager pool of talent. ["Cheaper labor" at the expense of American jobs is contrary to the intent of the H-1B program, and could constitute fraud.] By June, the Indian firm InfoSys already had 165 employees in Aetna's U.S. offices and 400 more serving the Hartford company from India. The U.S. Immigration and Nationalization Service says it doesn't track how many people are here on H-1Bs at any given time, though it's in the hundreds of thousands.

  • 6000 jam freeway to apply for 200 jobs at eBay - H-1B workers remain in their eBay jobs while Americans play musical chairs for the scraps


  • Rolling Up the Welcome Mat - "Immigration attorneys are being flooded with laid off H1-B workers..." - The Reporter Nov. 20 (Cited in 11/22 commentary by Candice McFarland)

  • Former Motorola exec sends 2000 resumes: One interview, zero jobs - "Intel is getting rid of the same people (in certain positions) in Japan as Silicon Valley," he said. "This has never happened before, and the long-term ramifications are scary. I do believe the country is in uncharted waters. After the dot-com collapse, trillions of dollars have evaporated (from stock market losses), and 500,000 high-tech workers have been displaced."


  • Intel CEO claims work will move overseas to follow the skills - He fails to explain why most of Intel's software engineering openings are in Pengang, Malaysia. Is Intel following "skills," or the lowest possible wage? After claiming a "state of emergency" should be declared over the lack of engineers in the U.S., Intel CEO Craig Barrett concedes that Intel has not had a problem attracting all the workers it needs within the U.S. He fails to explain the 6% unemployment rate among U.S. engineers, nor does he cite any employer who has been unable to find engineers.

  • Slowdown sending tech jobs overseas - The U.S. economy might be stalling, but at least one niche is hot: shipping technology jobs offshore...

  • Immigration Lawyer LIES - "Immigrants don't take jobs from Americans, they create jobs..." (Silicon Valley Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren is a former immigration attorney and now key H-B advocate.)

  • United States leaving first world - Paul Craig Roberts, January 22, 2003: America has turned its back on Americans... The U.S. government is replete with hatred of everyone who sticks up for the rights of citizenship... The list of occupations that can be destroyed by "internationalizing" the U.S. job market is long... Outsourcing to lower wage countries can be a solution for individual companies. But when all U.S. companies outsource, the implication is a population working for Wal-Mart selling foreign-made goods.

    Will America be a Third World country in 20 years?

  • Shift of tech jobs abroad speeding up, report says - - Diane E. Lewis, Boston Globe 12/25/2002 - "In the past US companies relied on foreign workers with H-1B visas to reduce costs." - Outsourcing VP acknowledging that H-1B is not being used only when no qualified Americans exist, but rather as a means of bypassing American workers to get cheaper labor.

  • Dec 2002 Forbes: The New HP Way: World's Cheapest Consultants - "We're trying to move everything we can offshore." - HP Services chief Ann Livermore ... HP figures a good high-end programmer in India costs about $20,000 a year, about a quarter the U.S. cost. And things could get even cheaper. "We see China gaining on India about three or four years from now."

    This outsourcing is the "giant sucking sound" of NAFTA that Ross Perot warned of nearly a decade ago. The corporate lie was that NAFTA would somehow help Americans by opening overseas markets to American products.

Mastech and Tata treat workers as virtual slaves

EXCERPTS: Among those Mastech sued was Roy Mani, who came to the United States in late 1997 after being recruited in India. "They made me an offer but then kept me waiting for six months," he said. When he got the call that a job was waiting, he was told he had to leave immediately. He was handed a document to sign, but had no time to read it.

The document was an employment contract under which he agreed to pay Mastech $10,000 in damages if he failed to stay with the company for at least 18 months and to give the firm at least six weeks' notice of quitting. Another Mastech employee, Guromurthy Thanukunoori, said he was forced to work 50 to 55 hours a week, sometimes 13 or 14 hours a day while on an assignment with Wal-Mart.

Patton also defended standard Tata contract provisions that entitle the firm to collect up to $30,000 in damages if an employee leaves an assignment before its completion.

Referring to body shops, he added: "It's really just a gimmick. This whole concept of renting out H-1Bs is outrageous. It's the equivalent of renting out your slave to the next plantation."

Former Rep. Bruce A. Morrison, who chaired the House immigration subcommittee in 1990 when H-1B was created is equally critical. "Our system is based on the power of people to look out for themselves," he said. "That's all destroyed by indenturing our workers."

Congress trades 2800 American Jobs for One 2-year degree

BEREAN INSTITUTE was awarded 2.8 million from the H-1B fee fund - offset for 2800 jobs given to foreigners. Berean only issued ONE tech degree in 2001. Berean only offers 2-year degrees. In order to compete with H-1B workers, one needs at least a 4-year degree and work experience in the precise technology the employer wants.

Foreigners draft U.S. Immigration Law

Incredibly, H-1B workers - citizens of other countries - assisted in drafting the H-1B legislation in October 2000, which increased the H-1B limit to nearly 600,000 over three years:

"Much of the credit goes to H-1B workers who so effectively organized and added a number of important amendments to the final bill. " - Carl Shusterman