Worker Visas Intensify Debate on Immigration
Skilled Foreigners Embraced, Envied

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 25, 2007

In a sleek, spartan office overlooking Tysons Corner, three young men in shirt sleeves hunch over computer screens. Paul Murphy is designing a site for golf tournaments. Pranay Gujjeti is creating an image-editing program. Darren Gibney is producing a commercial for fire alarms.

These foreign-born software engineers -- from Northern Ireland, India and Ireland -- are legal immigrants, spending several years in the United States on special work visas. They say they thrive on the exposure to America's cutting-edge technology and competitive culture. Their boss at Virtual Atlantic Inc., Austin Farshi, says they bring an eager attitude and exceptional talent.

But as the emotionally charged issue of immigration consumes the U.S. Senate and the nation this month, skilled foreign professionals are almost as contentious a part of the restructuring debate as impoverished illegal immigrants who sneak across the Mexican border to harvest crops or hang drywall.

In many ways, the proposed legislation favors high-skilled immigrants and the industries that employ them. It would increase the ceiling on new H-1B professional visas, which allow one- to six-year stays, from 65,000 to 115,000 a year. More important, it would shift the historic emphasis in U.S. immigration law from family-reunification to educational and skill levels in determining who is eligible for permanent residency.

Companies that rely on skilled foreign workers say they desperately need more of them, but opponents see their proliferation as an invisible blight on the economy. They argue that the H-1B visa program displaces tens of thousands of U.S.-born professionals, depresses wages and exploits programmers from other countries.

"This is a cheap labor program, a 20th-century version of importing cheap tomato pickers," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies. Older American professionals seeking decent salaries and benefits, he said, are being "squeezed out" of high-tech fields by young immigrants who are "willing to sleep on the floor and work 18 hours a day because they get something else: a shot at living in the United States."

In a study released last week, the center found that "very few" H-1B workers could be called highly skilled. It also found that wages for such workers were on average $12,000 below their U.S.-born counterparts and that employers often said the "prevailing" wage in a variety of skilled fields -- which the law says all H1-B visa holders must be paid -- was significantly lower than it actually was.

Groups representing U.S. workers in several industries say they have suffered from the H-1B phenomenon, especially electrical engineers and computer programmers. John Bauman, president of a Connecticut professional workers rights group, said many members once held skilled jobs in the state's huge insurance industry but were gradually laid off and replaced by low-cost foreigners.

"Our co-founder once earned more than $100,000 with an insurance firm. Now he's driving an 18-wheeler," Bauman said.

Critics of skilled labor visas say high-tech firms in particular use a variety of tricks to replace domestic workers with foreigners and pay them less than the law allows. One such practice is to use subcontracting firms to sponsor their visas so the actual employers are not subject to the same legal restrictions. Another is to hire foreign students, who are exempt from visa ceilings if they have a graduate degree from a U.S. institution.

"If someone gets a master's degree in basket weaving from a fourth-rate diploma mill, should that be a fast track to immigration?" demanded John Miano, a software industry analyst affiliated with Krikorian's organization. "Where do you draw the line?"

Somewhat surprisingly to the bill's supporters in Congress and the White House, advocates of skilled immigrants and the high-tech field have heaped criticism instead of praise on the proposal. They say that the higher visa ceiling is still too low and that the new rules would make it more cumbersome for companies to hire foreign workers, removing their ability to select individual workers to sponsor for visas.

"This bill is pretty much a disaster for high-tech employers," said Stuart Anderson of the nonprofit National Foundation for American Policy in Arlington County. He said the proposed rules, which would require employers to prove a temporary foreign worker has special skills and would not displace a U.S. worker, are "so onerous and vague that you would start shackling fast-moving companies. The risk is that they may decide it is better to expand outside the United States."

A study released this week by the policy group found that, contrary to allegations that foreign workers are flooding a number of high-skilled industries, new H-1B visa holders account for only 0.07 percent of the total U.S. workforce and that 57 percent of them have advanced degrees. It also found that, contrary to fears that Americans are being displaced, computer and math professions in the United States are at "virtual full employment," with jobless rates of 2.4 percent.

But many employers of skilled visa workers, in a variety of fields, say they genuinely need their abilities and are not just looking to save money. They insist that U.S. universities produce nowhere near enough highly qualified graduates in a number of technical fields and that H-1B visas are their only relief.

"It's not mostly about the salary; it's about the attitude," said Farshi, of Virtual Atlantic. "They do the same work Americans do, and they earn the same amount. But they have more technical expertise than many Americans coming out of college, and they see working in this field as a prestigious opportunity instead of taking it for granted. We are getting the best of the best."

This year, the demand for H-1B visas was so great that April 2, when the government opened its doors to applicants for the annual quota, all 65,000 slots were claimed the same day and thousands more were rejected. Industry advocates and lawyers said that even if the ceiling were increased to 115,000 as the Senate bill proposes, next year's quota would also be immediately filled.

"I had 24 candidates this year, and we didn't get a single hit," said Ali Saberi, a Bethesda man whose company provides technology and management for public utilities. "It's not fair. I have made commitments to so many customers and contracts, and I won't have people to support them. It is hard to find people in the U.S. who know the new technology, and training them is a lot tougher than bringing someone in who already knows it."

Although most skilled visa positions are in highly specialized fields, employers sponsor foreign workers for jobs as diverse as hotel managers, exotic cuisine chefs and public accountants. In every case, they say -- but do not have to prove -- they cannot find an U.S.-born worker with the specific skills they seek.

Jerry Love, a partner in a Texas accounting firm and an industry advocate for H-1B visas, said his field has been experiencing an enormous demand for young accountants that U.S. colleges cannot fill. He said the profession is far more attractive to foreign-born students than U.S. natives even though firms such as his offer equal salaries and benefits to both groups.

"In accounting, we have more than enough demand for every single person who graduates today," Love said. "A lot of large universities are at maximum capacity in accounting, and a large percentage of those students are already foreign." U.S. students, he said, "may not think they are good in math, or they don't see accountants on TV the way they see doctors and lawyers."

At Virtual Atlantic, U.S.-born software workers outnumber the handful of foreign visa holders, but the three young immigrants seem to infuse the enterprise with a go-getting professional spirit -- as well as a passion for music and soccer.

"If you're smart and want to work hard, this is the best place," said Murphy, 26, who has a master's degree in engineering and makes more than $60,000 a year. "At home, you start with the same salary, but then it takes a long time to rise," he said. "In America, you get recognized, you move faster. It's great."