Building Careers and Shaping Public Policy

16 October 2003

The Honorable Orrin G. Hatch
Chair, Committee on Judiciary 
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Mr. Chairman:

I am writing on behalf of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - United States of America (IEEE-USA) to thank you for allowing the visa quota for entry of H-1B foreign workers to revert to the historically authorized level of 65,000 on October 1. The third quarter unemployment statistics confirm that unemployment is on the rise again for U.S. electrical engineers and computer professionals, with an engineering unemployment rate much higher than the overall workforce rate, and with over 178,000 computer hardware and software engineers, electrical engineers, and computer scientists unemployed. By putting a curb on the H-1B visa program, you are restoring a much needed incentive for U.S. firms to recruit U.S. high-tech workers.

Recently, the General Accounting Office released a report on H-1B foreign workers (GAO-03-883), which highlights several issues with the H-1B visa program that we'd like to call to your attention:

• Lack of Employer Accountability: Only 36 out of 145 employers contacted were willing to share information with GAO on their utilization of H-1Bs.
  
• H-1B Workers Receiving Lower Wages: "…salaries listed on petitions for H-1B beneficiaries approved for either electrical/electronic engineer or systems analyst/programmer positions who were 31-50 years of age and had graduate degrees were lower (by about $11,000 -$22,000) than salaries reported by U.S. citizens with the same characteristics. In addition, salaries listed on petitions for H-1B beneficiaries approved for electrical/electronic engineer positions who were 31-50 years old and did not have graduate degrees were lower (by about $5,000) than salaries reported by their U.S. counterparts." (pp. 15-16)
  
• Abuse of Prevailing Wage Requirement: "Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD), which is responsible for ensuring that H-1B workers are receiving legally required wages, has continued to find instances of program abuse. As shown in table 3, the number of investigations in which violations were found doubled from fiscal year 2000 to 2002, and the amount of back wages owed to H-1B workers by employers increased from $1.6 million in fiscal year 2000 to $4.2 million in fiscal year 2002." (pp. 25-26)
  
• Workers Not Being Tracked: "DHS cannot account for all the H-1B worker entries, departures, and changes of visa status using its current tracking systems, because NIIS and CLAIMS 3 data are not integrated, and data for certain fields in each of these systems are not consistently collected and entered. As a result, DHS is not able to provide some key information needed to oversee the H-1B program and assess its effects on the U.S. workforce." (p.27)
  
• Regulations Not Implemented: "In addition to information systems issues, DHS's ability to provide information on the status of the H-1B population is constrained because it has not issued consistent guidance or any regulations for implementing the visa portability provision of the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000 (AC21). This has resulted in uncertainty about the extent to which unemployed H-1B workers can legally remain in the United States while seeking new jobs." (p. 31)
  
• Trend Toward Use of L-1 Visas: "…in recent years, employers have increasingly turned to the L-1 visa, an intracompany transfer visa that can be used by companies to bring their foreign professional workers to the United States on a temporary basis.18 L-1 visas do not have an annual cap and are not subject to prevailing wage laws." (p. 24)

We anticipate that Congress may be asked to revisit the H-1B visa quota again shortly as part of omnibus appropriations legislation, including a proposal(s) to circumvent the cap with new categories of visa exemptions. At that time, we urge you not only to take a closer look at the real impacts of this program on U.S. high-tech jobs, competitiveness and security, but also take action to restore and strengthen the workforce protections that expired on Sept. 30. Please call upon our legislative representative Vin O'Neill at (202) 785-0017 x 8327 if we can be of any assistance.

Sincerely,

Jim V. Leonard, P.E. 
2003 President, IEEE-USA

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