IMMIGRATION-US: Foreign Computer Nerds Welcome; Latinos Go Elsewhere

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 5 2000 (IPS) - In a measure of the fast-growing political clout of the hi-tech industry, a bill that will permit companies to import almost 200,000 highly skilled foreign workers has swept through the US Congress with scarcely a single dissent.

Its approval nearly doubles the number of hi-tech workers from abroad – most of them from India and East Asia – who will be permitted to work here for up to six years on a special visa, called the H-1B.

The bill, which was supported by the leadership of both parties in Congress and President Bill Clinton, who is expected to sign it into law later this week, had been bogged down for months. Democrats tried to attach to it a series of other measures, including one granting amnesty to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants – the vast majority from Caribbean countries, Mexico and other Latin American countries – who have lived and worked here since 1986.

These measures – combined in the Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act (LIFA) – have been strongly backed by Hispanic lobby groups. Hispanic voters, who account for more than 10 percent of the electorate, are being courted avidly by both Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the run-up to next month’s election and constitute a key “swing” constituency.

But, with time for this session of Congress rapidly running out, the Republican leadership – which is deeply divided on immigration issues – decided to act only on the underlying H-1B bill and leave the amnesty and other provisions sponsored by Democratic lawmakers by the wayside. The bill passed by a 96-1 vote in the Senate Tuesday and was approved by a voice vote in the House of Representatives just a few hours later.

Hispanic activists hope that LIFA will still pass before Congress adjourns next week. Democrats are trying to attach it to an upcoming appropriations bill for the Commerce, Justice, and State (CJS) Departments, and Clinton himself has vowed to veto that bill if it does not include the amnesty provisions. But the outcome remains uncertain. Republicans from districts and states with large Hispanic populations also are loath to oppose it.

“If LIFA doesn’t get attached to CJS, we will feel badly burned,” said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). “We will punish those politicians who are responsible for it,” he added, noting that a majority of Republicans may still try to kill it by attaching their own amendment to increase by about 100,000 the number of guest workers from Mexico permitted to enter the United States for seasonal agricultural labour.

“We will oppose LIFA if it’s got the guest workers provision in it,” said Wilkes, who compared the guest worker programme to apartheid in South Africa. “It says, ‘come here, do our dirty work, and then go home to Mexico.”‘

The ease and margin with which the H-1B programme swept through both houses Tuesday reflected the priority that it was given by the hi-tech industries whose companies have become major political funders in the last few years.

A recent survey by the independent Center for Responsive Politics found that computer companies have contributed an average of 5,000 dollars to 325 of 434 members of the House and an average of 22,000 dollars to 75 of the 100 senators over the past 20 months. Altogether, the hi-tech industry has spent more than 22 million dollars over that period in its lobbying effort – about three times what it spent during the previous two-year election cycle, according to the Center.

The computer industry has complained for years of a growing domestic shortage of qualified computer programmers and other hi-tech workers. In 1997, it persuaded Congress to increase the number of H-1B visas to 115,000 for all of the year 2000. But that limit was reached already last March.

Under the bill passed Tuesday, the limit would increase to 195,000 for each of the next three years. Moreover, the bill would exempt from the limit foreign students who have recently received an advanced degree from a US university, or foreign workers who work for the US government or US non-profit organisations.

To receive the visa, workers must be recruited by US companies which act as their sponsors. It accords the recipient the right to stay for a total of six years provided that they remain employed by the company- sponsor.

For each visa application, the company must pay the government 500 dollars which is then earmarked for a programme that trains US workers and students for hi-tech jobs. The Clinton administration had wanted the application fee increased to 1,000 dollars and is trying to attach that to another piece of legislation.

In approving the bill, lawmakers swept aside a more restrictive version put together in the House Immigration Subcommittee. Among other measures, it would have required sponsor-companies to pay H-1B recipients a minimum of 40,000 dollars a year and to show that they had increased the median wage paid to US workers from year to year.

“We need to protect American workers from being undercut,” said the subcommittee chairman, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith. But Smith’s appeal fell on deaf ears, as company lobbyists prowling the corridors outside both chambers made clear that they were adamantly opposed to such restrictions.

“There are no protections to prevent this from being used as a way of displacing American workers and no minimum salary requirements,” complained David Ray of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group which generally opposes liberalisation of US immigration laws. “This will allow the companies to bring (foreign workers) in at sub-standard wages.” Ray called the bill a “bonanza for the hi-tech industry.”

LULAC’s Smith, who normally finds himself opposing FAIR, agreed. “We’re really disappointed,” he said. “The only people who really favour this is the hi-tech industry; certainly not hi-tech workers who will see pressure on their wages as a result.

“We’ve been trying to get Silicon Valley to recruit Hispanics from the domestic workforce and bring them into these high-paid positions,” he went on. “But they’re not interested in that because it’s cheaper to import people than to educate the US workforce, and these people are much easier to control because they have much less freedom than US workers in terms of organising once they’re here.”

LULAC and other Hispanic groups strongly oppose any Republican effort to push for expanding the H-2A visa programme – which permits Mexican and other farmworkers to pick crops in the United States – for similar reasons.

“At least, with the H-1B programme, the recipients are making some money,” according to Wilkes. “But, with the H-2A, they make anywhere from two to five dollars an hour and work in often dangerous conditions.”

That’s why the Hispanic groups are concerned that Republican lawmakers may try to attach an expanded H-2A programme to the LIFA provisions if Democrats succeed in adding them to the CJS appropriations bill. “We will oppose LIFA if it’s got the guest workers provisions,” Wilkes told IPS.