Executives from major U.S. tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, YouTube, Netflix and Instagram have joined forces — and finances — to help the Obama administration push through so-called comprehensive immigration reform and boost the number of foreign worker visas.
Their argument is that the the U.S. economy is in desperate need of more skilled workers from overseas to fill jobs in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
To fill those jobs, the tech companies are calling for the expansion of the nation’s H-1B visa program.
The Associated Press explains:
The H-1B program allows employers to temporarily hire workers in specialty occupations. The government issues up to 85,000 H-1B visas to businesses every year, and recipients can stay up to six years. Although no one tracks exactly how many H-1B holders are in the U.S., experts estimate there are at least 600,000 at any one time. Skilled guest workers can also come in on other types of visas.
An immigration bill passed in the U.S. Senate last year would have increased the number of annually available H-1B visas to 180,000 while raising fees and increasing oversight, although language was removed that would have required all companies to consider qualified U.S. workers before foreign workers are hired.
The House never took up the Senate’s bill, and immigration reform is considered dead in Congress, at least for this year. But that’s not stopping President Obama, who announced recently that he will change U.S. immigration rules via executive action.
Critics of the plan say there is no evidence that there is a shortage of STEM workers in the U.S., because if there were, wages would be rising, when in reality wages have actually fallen for programmers in recent years.
The lack of wage growth combined with the influx of foreign labor has led to a backlash among American STEM workers who are frustrated with their inability to land jobs in their chosen fields.
As a matter of fact, data just released by the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that a stunning 74 percent of American STEM workers currently aren’t working in a STEM field at all, but have had to find work elsewhere.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has been the most outspoken critic of the administration’s immigration policies, contending that millions of American STEM workers without jobs should take precedent over bringing in even more foreign labor.
“Rutgers Professor Hal Salzman has documented that the U.S. graduates two STEM workers for every one STEM job opening,” Sessions told Yellowhammer today. “This may be a surprising statistic, but evidence confirms this trend. A new U.S. Census Bureau report shows that 3/4 of America’s STEM graduates don’t have STEM jobs. There is a surplus of STEM-trained Americans who can’t find employment in their chosen field. Yet the President wants to double the number of temporary guest workers who are allowed to enter the country to take jobs in these fields. These guest workers are brought into the U.S. at lower wages for the specific purpose of filling jobs for which Americans are applying. These are not ‘jobs Americans won’t do’ – these are jobs Americans are trained to do but which President Obama’s policies are denying them.”
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