Hatch Should Fix H1-B Visa Program Instead Of Expanding It

Corporate lobbyists have convinced legislators of both parties that America needs more guest workers in high-tech jobs. Leading the charge in Congress to do their bidding is Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who has introduced legislation to double or triple the number of non-immigrant tech workers who can be hired annually on H-1B visas. But his proposal won't fix the H-1B program's flaws, which allow American and foreign workers alike to be exploited and underpaid.

A program that brings skilled, smart people from abroad to work in the United States can be a very good thing — but only if it's done fairly, and after giving U.S. workers a chance to be hired. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Fla., wrote recently that the H-1B program "was created to help fill jobs when there were labor shortages, not to take jobs away from anyone." The reality is that employers aren't required to search for or offer jobs to U.S. workers first, and the H-1B program has been used repeatedly by corporations to fire and replace skilled and educated U.S. workers with cheaper, indentured, temporary foreign workers. This is done to increase corporate profits, but it's at the expense of the livelihoods of thousands of American workers.

Thanks to reporting from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Computerworld, the American public is getting a glimpse of the H-1B's primary purpose. Recent, egregious examples took place at Disney and Southern California Edison (SCE) — two companies that earned billions in profits last year — where hundreds of information technology workers were laid off and replaced with H-1Bs. But first, the U.S. employees were required to train the H-1B workers who would soon be sitting at their desks, doing their jobs.

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