Employers opposed to advertising positions and recruiting Americans before sponsoring H-1b workers to fill U.S. jobs

Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced the “H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud Prevention Abuse Prevention Act of 2007.” (S.1035) According to a bulletin by immigration attorney Greg Siskind, employers object to the time and expense of offering jobs to Americans:

"The chief objection to this usually relates to the details of the recruiting requirement and how this would significantly slow the process for bringing in a worker that may be needed immediately. Employers would have to advertise a position for 30 days before they could seek an H-1B approval."

H-1b proponents also object that the Durbin-Grassley bill would stem H-1b bodyshops. "This is seen as potentially very disruptive to the information technology sector..." writes Siskind. Rather than being hired for a specific job, H-1b bodyshops first secure H-1b workers, then they agressively apply for external job openings. Legally U.S. employers cannot give preference to Americans - even when several American applicants are clearly qualified for the job: If just one of the 100 H-1b resumes from H-1b bodyshops is "more qualified," by law, the employer must hire the H-1b, or be subject to a claim of "discrimination based on immigration status or national origin" - thus drumming up more business for AILA lawyers.

Currently the DOL and USCIS know of 130,000 U.S. job openings that will not be filled until October 2007. But these agencies will not disclose these jobs to U.S. workers. Instead they conspire against Americans by reserving these jobs for H-1b workers. The Durin-Grassley bill would require that DOL make post the job openings represented by H-1b applications on their website for 30 days, giving Americans the opportunity to inquire about the positions.

Both AILA and H-1b employers are aware that qualified Americans are being displaced by H-1b workers. And their opposition to the basic protections in the Durbin-Grassley reveal their true motive of keeping it that way.

This "we don't have the time to hire American workers" posture goes far beyond any legitimate claim of a labor shortage. Congress should act in the interests of American workers and co-sponsor the Durbin-Grassley protections.

Immigration attorney alleges that many of the 130,000 H-1b applications were duplicates

In his blog "IS THIS CHEATING?" AILA member Gregory Siskind warns of "many companies sending in multiple H-1B applications for the same employees." Siskind speculates that the reason employers filed multiple applications is to improve the odds that at least one of the applications would be selected in the lottery. "The sole goal is to increase one's odds at the expense of others," writes Siskind.

USCIS could have avoided this lottery sham by giving preference to the higher-paid applications. But USCIS stated that they deem hotel clerks equally qualified as genetic researchers. USCIS has already completed their lottery, gambling away another 65,000 U.S. jobs, in spite of qualified Americans available to fill them.

UCLA lobbying against their own American students

As reported in the 4/18/2007 Daily Bruin, UCLA is lobbying to increase the H-1b cap. The article fails to reveal the substantial harm that the increase will have on UCLA's predominately American students, both immediately upon graduation and throughout their careers as they try to compete for jobs in a job market where employers can select from resumes arriving from the poorest countries on earth. (India and China alone have seven times the population of the U.S.)

The article fails to reveal that the reason H-1b cap is being reached is not because of foreign graduates from U.S. schools, but rather due to the flood of graduates of foreign universites. Unlike UCLA graduates, these graduates do not have huge student loans and thus can accept lower pay, driving down all wages.

The article closes with this gem by Bernard Wolfsdorf, national second vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which lobbies for more H-1b to increase their $100 million industry of processing these visas:

“The fact of the matter is immigrants don’t take jobs, they create jobs.”

This is false. Some employers claim that up to 90% of the applications they receive are from H-1b or people seeking H-1b sponsorship. Under the law of averages, a substantial number of Americans are not getting jobs they apply for due to the H-1b visa - which contains no requirement to first recruit American workers.