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October 29, 2009

H-1B work visas go begging

The law of supply and demand is leaving many temporary H-1B visas unused. According to the Wall Street Journal,

“Last year, even as the recession began to bite, employers snapped up the 65,000 visas available in just one day. This year, however, as of Sept. 25 -- nearly six months after the U.S. government began accepting applications -- only 46,700 petitions had been filed.”

The article summarizes the program thusly:

In 2008, 44% of approved H-1B visa petitions were for foreigners working as systems analysts or programmers. The second-largest category consisted of professionals working in universities. Indians account for about half of all H-1B visa holders.

While the number of visa holders is small compared with the U.S. work force, their contribution is huge, employers say. For example, last year 35% of Microsoft's patent applications in the U.S. came from new inventions by visa and green-card holders, according to company general counsel Brad Smith.

The article in full:

By MIRIAM JORDAN

A coveted visa program that feeds skilled workers to top-tier U.S. technology companies and universities is on track to leave thousands of spots unfilled for the first time since 2003, a sign of how the weak economy has eroded employment even among highly trained professionals.

The program, known as H-1B, has been a mainstay of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, where many companies have come to depend on securing visas for computer programmers from India or engineers from China. Last year, even as the recession began to bite, employers snapped up the 65,000 visas available in just one day. This year, however, as of Sept. 25 -- nearly six months after the U.S. government began accepting applications -- only 46,700 petitions had been filed.


In addition to the weak economy, companies have curbed applications in the face of anti-immigrant sentiment in Washington and rising costs associated with hiring foreign-born workers.

Usually, all visas are allocated within a month or two from April, when applications for the following fiscal year are first accepted. But this year, six months later, "you can still walk in with an application and you're still highly likely to get approved," said R. Srikrishna, senior vice president for business operations in North America for HCL Technologies Ltd., an Indian outsourcing company.

The sagging economy, which has pushed U.S. unemployment to 9.8%, has crimped expansion in the technology sector, traditionally the biggest user of the H-1B program. Julie Pearl, a corporate immigration lawyer in San Francisco, said that at least a third of her clients have cut their hiring of H-1B visa holders in half from a year ago.

"Most companies just aren't hiring as many people in general," Ms. Pearl said.

For Indian outsourcing companies, historically the largest recipients of H-1B visas, the economy as well as political pressures have prompted a cutback in applications. The recession has trimmed technology budgets at their U.S. clients; at the same time, Washington has scrutinized hiring from abroad more closely amid high unemployment at home.

Instead of bringing over Indian engineers, HCL has been hiring American employees who otherwise might have been let go by clients switching the work to HCL, Mr. Srikrishna said. Last year, HCL hired more than 1,000 employees from clients and received just 87 H-1B visas, he said.

Political pressures have come to bear among other applicants as well. Companies that receive federal bailout funds must prove they have tried to recruit American workers at prevailing wages and that foreigners aren't replacing U.S. citizens. That regulation caused Bank of America Corp., among others, to rescind job offers to dozens of foreigners.

In addition, would-be immigrants from India and China are finding new career opportunities at home as those economies grow relatively quickly while the U.S. economy sags and its political climate appears less welcoming.

Vivek Wadhwa, a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley who has studied H-1B visas, said that trend has been compounded by what he sees as rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. "The best and the brightest who would normally come here are saying, 'Why do we need to go to a country where we are not welcome, where our quality of life would be less, and we would be at the bottom of the social ladder?'" Mr. Wadhwa said.

The cost and bureaucracy of applying for H-1B visas is another deterrent. Lawyers' fees, filing fees and other expenses can easily reach $5,000 per applicant.

And immigration lawyers say some would-be employers are put off by a crackdown on fraud. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers the H-1B program, has been dispatching inspectors on surprise company visits to verify that H-1B employees are performing the jobs on the terms specified. The fraud-detection unit in coming months is expected to inspect up to 20,000 companies with H-1Bs and other temporary worker visas.

"It's an invasive procedure that is both stressful for the employer and the foreign national employee," said Milwaukee lawyer Jerome Grzeca, whose employment-visa business is down 40% since last year.

The numbers represent a sharp turnaround for a program that many companies had complained was too stingy with its visas. Year after year, U.S. businesses braced for "visa roulette," as applications to bring in highly skilled foreign workers far outstripped demand, forcing the government to hold a lottery to award them.

High-tech companies, such as Microsoft Corp., have been lobbying Congress for years to raise the cap. At the same time, some U.S. legislators have been calling for restrictions on the program, which they say displaces American workers.

Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, wrote a letter this month to the new director of citizenship and immigration services, urging tighter controls on H-1B visas. In April, Mr. Grassley and Illinois Democrat Sen. Richard Durbin introduced legislation to require companies to pass more stringent labor-market tests that would ensure they make a bigger effort to hire U.S. workers.

Companies that use H-1B visas argue the market, rather than Congress, should dictate the number of visas issued. The fact that the 65,000-visa cap hasn't been reached this year shows that the market will temper demand when necessary, said Jenifer Verdery, director of work-force policy at Intel Corp., who represents a coalition of companies that use the visas.

"Contrary to the claims of H-1B critics, if importing cheap labor were the goal of H-1B visa employers, these visas would have been gone on the first day applications were accepted last spring," Ms. Verdery said. "In slow economic times, such as today, the demand decreases and the market takes over, which is as it should be."

In 2008, 44% of approved H-1B visa petitions were for foreigners working as systems analysts or programmers. The second-largest category consisted of professionals working in universities. Indians account for about half of all H-1B visa holders.

While the number of visa holders is small compared with the U.S. work force, their contribution is huge, employers say. For example, last year 35% of Microsoft's patent applications in the U.S. came from new inventions by visa and green-card holders, according to company general counsel Brad Smith.

Google Inc. also says that the H-1B program allowed it to tap top talent that was crucial to its development. India native Krishna Bharat, for example, joined the firm in 1999 through the H-1B program, and went on to earn several patents while at Google. He was credited by the company as being the key developer of its Google News service. Today, he holds the title of distinguished research scientist.

—Niraj Sheth, Geoffrey A. Fowler, S. Mitra Kalita and Pui-Wing Tam contributed to this article.


October 28, 2009

New York City’s Immigrant-related policies


A Bloomberg Administration-friendly article in the Gotham Gazette reviews steps that the New York City government has supported the welfare of immigrant populations, including ESL and support of the DREAM Act. This is not a bad set of programs that municipal and state governments could adopt. Bloomberg himself is a grandson of an immigrant. The most spoken languages other than English are Spanish, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Russian, Korean and Italian.

Making New York 'Immigrant Friendly'
By Larry Tung


As the election approaches, Bloomberg hopes to win votes in New York's immigrant communities. While his recently announced initiatives on immigration could be seen as campaign promises, over the last eight years he has been widely seen as a strong and outspoken supporter for immigrants.

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

Immigrants have long been drawn to New York City because it provides many opportunities for all people, regardless of their immigration status. This remains true today, even in the face of the poor economy. As more cities and states have begun allowing their police to check people's immigration status, New York City remains a safe haven for those without documentation.

In September 2003, Bloomberg signed Executive Order 41 to reinforce that protection. The order prohibited city workers from inquiring about a person's immigration status when the person seeks services from a city agency or witnesses a crime.


Immigrants "have always been and will always be welcome here," said Bloomberg at the signing ceremony. "And the reason is simple: what's good for the city's immigrants is good for the city."

Found in Translation?

Because New York has welcomed immigrants, the city now is home to people speaking more than 170 different languages. In July 2008, Bloomberg signed Executive Order 120 to mandate all city agencies that provide public services translate and interpret in the city's six most spoken languages other than English: Spanish, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Russian, Korean and Italian.

"When he instituted the citywide language access executive order, [requiring] all city agencies ... to translate and interpret to all city residents, no matter what their language capability, I think that was received as a pretty precedent-setting policy around the country," said Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigrant Coalition. "That was an important accomplishment the city has done."

But some said the move, while important, was long overdue.

"We are very happy that the language access executive order was passed about a year ago but I think it is important to note that it took a lot of advocacy over the course of seven years to get the mayor to agree to do an executive order," said Wayne Ho, executive director of the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families. "What I often wonder is that if the mayor has been so committed to immigrant populations, why does it take so much advocacy in order to get policies or funding passed?"

Learning English

At the same time he has increased translation services, Bloomberg has also looked at ways to help immigrants who do not speak English learn the language. To help immigrants with limited English ability improve their proficiency, Bloomberg proposed a 10-year plan to provide English as a Second Language classes with job-training opportunities to an estimated number of 50,000 immigrant adults. He said the city will initially commit $3 million to serve additional 5,000 people.

The problem of not speaking English seems particularly dire in the schools. According to a report released by the Department of Education, the dropout rate among English language learners is significantly higher than for other students. Only 30.8 percent of the English language learners graduated from high school in four years.

"Under mayoral control, while all student groups had their test scores and graduation rates increased, the dropout rates for English language learner students actually increased, and test scores and graduation rates for them decreased," said Ho. "While [Bloomberg] keeps talking about mayoral control being successful for the school system, that's not necessarily true for English language learners."

Bloomberg has said he will convene a task force in the hopes of improving academic performance for these students.

Supporting the Dream Act

The Dream Act, which stands for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, proposed legislation that would help certain undocumented immigrant youth gain legal status. The bill has been under discussion since 2001 and has been introduced to Congress at various occasions. Bloomberg has been an outspoken supporter.

"Why shouldn't our economy benefit from the skills these young people have obtained here in our public schools?" he said at a 2009 press conference officially endorsing the act. "It is senseless for us to chase out the home-grown talent that has the potential to contribute so significantly to our society. They're the ones who are going to start companies, invest in new technologies, pioneer medical advances. We need to welcome more immigrants, not deport those already here."

In the latest version, introduced in March 2009, undocumented immigrant youth would be eligible to apply for permanent residency if they have proof of having arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 and have lived in the U.S. for at least five consecutive years. They must also have attended at least two years of American high school and have graduated from it. They will be given a six-year conditional status, during which period they must attend college or serve in the military for at least two years.

Bloomberg also cited the in-state tuition policy at the City University of New York as a model for other public institutions in the country. Currently any undocumented student who has attended high school for at least two years and graduate or earned a GED in New York State is eligible for the lower, in-state tuition at the City University if the person applies for a CUNY institution with five years of receiving their high school diploma.

Upgrading the Office of Immigrant Affairs

The Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, formerly known as the Office of Immigrant Affairs and Language Assistance, has existed under various names and forms since the mid-1980s. In November 2001, the office became a charter agency, adopted by voter referendum into the city's charter. This provides it with direct access to the mayor and makes it a permanent part of the city government. In 2002, Bloomberg appointed Sayu Bhojwani as the first commissioner. Currently, Fatima Shama, a former education policy advisor to Bloomberg, heads the agency.

In 2004, Bloomberg initiated the first Immigrant Heritage Week. It is an annual citywide celebration of immigrant cultures that includes more than 100 free or low-cost events in art, music, dance and cinema. Taking place in every April, the celebration was made permanent when Bloomberg signed Executive Order 128 in April 2009.

Protection Against Immigration Fraud

Like employment agencies, immigration service companies are found in many ethnic neighborhoods. Although not attorneys, their staffs help immigrants prepare the documents and forms required by the Department of Homeland Security. Many of these service providers take advantage of immigrants who are not familiar with immigration laws and not proficient in English. This often leads to fraud such as the companies demanding for money for services they didn't perform or providing legal advice when they are not supposed to.

In 2004, Bloomberg signed Local Law 31 to ensure that immigrants are protected from fraud. Immigration service agencies are required to provide written contract in English as well as the client's native language, give the client three days to cancel the contract without penalty, itemize all charges, give back original documents upon request and have a legible sign stating the provider is not an attorney.

New Initiatives

The mayor's latest program sets out a number of initiatives aimed at immigrants. For example, he said he will add 1,000 spots for English language learner students to the city's summer youth employment program, which serves more than 50,000 young people. The city will identify bilingual work environments to accommodate students in entry-level jobs.

To help immigrants better integrate into civic life, Bloomberg proposed language assistance to immigrant homeowners on issues including code enforcement, property tax exemption, recycling, foreclosure prevention and so on. He said the Department of Housing Preservation and Development will conduct at least three forums per year in predominately immigrant communities.

To help immigrant entrepreneurs, the Department of Small Business Services will continue to conduct information sessions on financing, business assistance and government resources in Spanish. Bloomberg said similar programs in Russian and Asian languages are in the works.

At the federal level, Bloomberg said he will continue to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. "I've said this a thousand times: I think this country is committing national suicide by not bringing the best and the brightest, the hardest working, the most fun … from around the world," Bloomberg said.

The People Will Be Watching

Advocates for immigrants will be checking to see whether Bloomberg delivers on his promises.

"Mayor Bloomberg does understand that the immigrant community is a vital part of New York City and he is committed to improving the quality of life for immigrant New Yorkers," said Wayne Ho. "But ... I would have hoped the mayor realizes that he is culpable in some of the challenges that immigrant New Yorkers currently face because he has cut back on budgets and hadn't passed certain policies earlier in his terms."

Discussing the mayor's new initiative, Hong said, "These are campaign promises but they are commitments on issues that immigrant communities have been talking about for a long time. ... It will be up to the people to hold him accountable to campaign pledges."

"In politics, they can offer everything. The thing is how do they do that," said Oscar Parades-Morales, executive director of the Latin American Workers Project. "We have to continue to push and work together."

Larry Tung is a Brooklyn-based journalist and media artist. He teaches media and film course at Kean University in Union, New Jersey.

October 26, 2009

Expose of private prisons for immigration violators

The Nov/Dec 2009 issue of the Boston Review contains an article by Tom Barry titled “A Death in Texas: Profits, poverty, and immigration converge.” Barry assiduously tracks the growth and performance of private prisons created and managed by private contractors to hold immigrants arrested for immigration violations. This is a must read and will be a factor in the upcoming push for immigration reform.


Excerpts:

Thus far, immigration prosecutions in 2009 outpace those of 2008 by 14 percent. Prosecutions are up 139 percent compared to five years ago, 459 percent compared to 1999, and 973 percent compared to 1989.......

Though speculative prisons come with no guarantees, all along the Southwest border—from Florence, Arizona to Raymondville, Texas—business is good. Since early 2003, the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems have merged, breaking the longstanding tradition of treating immigration violations as administrative offenses and creating hundreds of thousands of new criminal aliens.

While the growth in immigrant detention is in part due to the country’s increased immigrant population, the shift in immigration policy away from regulation and toward enforcement, punishment, and deterrence is more significant. Unwilling to pass a reform bill that would effectively regulate immigration, Congress and the executive branch have turned to the criminal justice and penal systems.

New anti-immigrant laws and practices by ICE and CBP subject immigrants, legal or illegal, to double jeopardy, punishing them twice for the same offense. In 1996 the Republican majority in Congress led approval of three anti-immigrant and anti-crime laws that spurred INS to start cracking down on and deporting immigrants. These laws, together with the executive branch’s increased authority to devise repressive immigration procedures under the post-9/11 pretext of a war on terror, have created an enforcement regime in which noncitizen legal immigrants face immigration consequences (as well as criminal consequences) for past or present violations of criminal law. In other words, illegal immigrants and even noncitizen permanent residents may be jailed and deported for committing crimes or other offenses, whether violent or not. DHS and the Justice Department are not only combing the criminal justice system for legal and illegal immigrants to be detained and deported, but the departments are also working together to transfer illegal immigrants into federal courts and prisons.

Legal scholars have taken to calling this increasing merger of criminal and immigration law and the integration of the criminal justice and immigration systems “crimmigration.”

The private-prison industry’s executives are particularly upbeat about new criminal alien programs such as CBP’s Operation Streamline and ICE’s Secure Communities. GEO Chairman George Zoley told Wall Street analysts in a July 2009 investment conference call: “The main driver for the growth of new beds at the federal level continues to be the detention and incarceration of criminal aliens.” CCA’s Chief Financial Officer, Todd Mullenger, emphasized the importance of programs such as Operation Streamline to prison profits in a recent investment conference call:

Border Patrol has consistently indicated from the planning stage of the initiative to the present that Operation Streamline will require additional detain beds due to increased prosecution and length of stay anticipated by the initiative.

Operation Streamline was launched in 2005 as a pilot project of the Del Rio sector of Texas and extends east to the southern Rio Grande Valley and west to Yuma, Arizona. It is part of a national immigrant crackdown that CBP and ICE variously call “enhanced enforcement” and “zero tolerance.” The program directs Border Patrol agents to turn captured illegal border crossers over to the Marshals Service for prosecution, breaking with the usual practice of simply returning Mexican immigrants to Mexico or releasing non-Mexican immigrants with an order to appear in immigration court.

October 16, 2009

“Wrong Paths to Immigration Reform”


Joe Arpaiom sheriff of Maricopa County, is always in the news. Here is a New York Times editorial on federal policy to delegate authority to enforce immigration laws – the 287(g) program:

All last week the people of Phoenix witnessed public outbursts by their sheriff, Joe Arpaio, as he railed against the Department of Homeland Security for supposedly trying to limit his ability to enforce federal immigration laws. He vowed to keep scouring Maricopa County for people whose clothing, accents and behavior betrayed them as likely illegal immigrants. He said he had already nabbed more than 32,000 people that way, and announced his next immigrant sweep for Oct. 16.

The spectacle raises two critical questions that the Obama administration is in danger of getting wrong.


One is the specific question of whether the federal government should keep Sheriff Arpaio in its 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to act as immigration agents in street patrols and in jails. The answer is absolutely not. Sheriff Arpaio has a long, ugly record of abusing and humiliating inmates. His scandal-ridden desert jails have lost accreditation and are notorious places of cruelty and injury. His indiscriminate neighborhood raids use minor infractions like broken taillights as pretexts for mass immigration arrests.

To the broader question of whether federal immigration enforcement should be outsourced en masse in the first place, the answer again is no.

It was only days ago that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano unveiled a plan to repair the rotting immigration detention system. The Bush administration had outsourced the job to state, local and private jailers, with terrible results: inadequate supervision, appalling conditions, injuries and deaths.

Ms. Napolitano wants to centralize federal control over the system that handles detainees. But she insists on continuing to outsource and expand the flawed machinery that catches them, including 287(g) and a system of jailhouse fingerprint checks called Secure Communities, which increase the likelihood that local enforcers will abuse their authority and undermine the law.

Rather than broadening the reach of law enforcement, using local police can cause immigrant crime victims to fear the police and divert the police from fighting crime. It leads to racial profiling, to Latino citizens and legal residents being asked for their papers. Responsible sheriffs and police chiefs across the country have looked at 287(g) and said no thanks.

Programs like 287(g) rest on the dishonest premise that illegal immigrants are a vast criminal threat. But only a small percentage are dangerous felons. The vast majority are those whom President Obama has vowed to help get right with the law, by paying fines and earning citizenship. Treating the majority of illegal immigrants as potential Americans, not a criminal horde, is the right response to the problem.

October 5, 2009

Healthcare insurance coverage for legal and illegal immigrants

The Migration Policy Institute has issued a study of immigrant coverage by health insurance. The key findings:

38 percent of legal immigrant children and 31 percent of unauthorized immigrant children have employer-provided coverage, compared to 61 percent of U.S.-born children.

23 percent of the uninsured in California are legal immigrants, who account for more than 10 percent of the uninsured in Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey. States with large immigrant populations could see expanded use of emergency rooms and public clinics if health care reform results in legal immigrants (and the unauthorized as well) being dropped from employer-sponsored insurance.

The share of legal immigrant adults who are uninsured ranges from 54 percent in Texas, 45 percent in Florida and 44 percent in North Carolina to 28 percent in New York.

Unauthorized immigrants represent 15 percent of the nation's 46 million uninsured, while legal immigrants account for 9 percent.

The summary in full:

WASHINGTON — Health care reform proposals under consideration in Congress that would exclude many legal immigrants from core benefits and impose new verification requirements would have important spillover consequences for taxpayers and other health care consumers, according to an analysis released today by the Migration Policy Institute.

In a new report, Immigrants and Health Care Reform: What's Really at Stake?, MPI's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy offers the first-ever estimates of the size of uninsured immigrant populations in major immigrant-destination states, the number of immigrant workers covered by employer-provided plans and the share of immigrants employed by small firms likely to be exempted from employer coverage mandates. The report, based on MPI's analysis of Census Bureau data, also examines health coverage for immigrants by legal status, age and poverty levels.

Of the estimated 12 million lawful permanent residents in the United States, 4.2 million are uninsured and more than 1 million would be excluded from Medicaid coverage or insurance subsidies if Congress does not remove the five-year waiting period for eligibility. Thirty-eight percent of legal immigrants work at small firms of 25 workers or less, which are likely to be exempted from employer mandates. Just 32 percent of legal immigrant workers at these small firms have insurance compared with 71 percent for U.S.-born workers.

If denied eligibility for Medicaid and insurance subsidies but subjected to mandates requiring them to purchase coverage, as contemplated by some legislative proposals, many legal immigrants (who have the same tax and Selective Service responsibilities as citizens) would face a significant burden.

"Leaving large numbers of legal immigrants out of health care reform would defeat the core goal of the legislation, which is to extend coverage to the nation's 46 million uninsured," said MPI Senior Vice President Michael Fix, who co-authored the report. "Congress recently restored some of the public benefit cuts imposed on legal immigrants by the 1996 welfare reform law, so excluding them now from health care reform would reverse this policy trajectory."

The report also examines eligibility screening proposals, and questions whether the benefits of insurance reform could be reduced by expensive and badly designed verification requirements to ensure unauthorized immigrants aren't getting health care benefits for which they are ineligible.

"Past experience with Medicaid suggests fraudulent use by unauthorized immigrants is very rare, raising questions about the value of an expensive pre-screening verification system that would impose clear burdens on many vulnerable Americans," said MPI Senior Policy Analyst Marc Rosenblum, a co-author of the report. "Document checks would be especially costly, and would have the biggest impact on U.S. citizens who cannot produce birth certificates or other forms of ID, leading to lost or delayed coverage."

Among the report's other findings:

38 percent of legal immigrant children and 31 percent of unauthorized immigrant children have employer-provided coverage, compared to 61 percent of U.S.-born children.

23 percent of the uninsured in California are legal immigrants, who account for more than 10 percent of the uninsured in Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey. States with large immigrant populations could see expanded use of emergency rooms and public clinics if health care reform results in legal immigrants (and the unauthorized as well) being dropped from employer-sponsored insurance.

The share of legal immigrant adults who are uninsured ranges from 54 percent in Texas, 45 percent in Florida and 44 percent in North Carolina to 28 percent in New York.

Unauthorized immigrants represent 15 percent of the nation's 46 million uninsured, while legal immigrants account for 9 percent.

"The budget projections for health care reform assume substantial savings by excluding many immigrants, but do not factor in the costs associated with leaving so many people uninsured. Denying coverage does not eliminate the need for health care, and uninsured immigrants will head to emergency rooms or may postpone necessary medical attention — ultimately shifting costs to taxpayers and other health consumers," said MPI Senior Policy Analyst and report co-author Randy Capps.

The full report is available at
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/healthcare-Oct09.pdf.