Bosses: Cap on foreign workers hampers growth
'We're an $8 million company and growing, but we're trying to compete with handcuffs on.'
ROBERT BREAULT
(below) of the optical engineering firm Breault Research
Southern Arizona could lose its edge in the high-tech industry without access to more highly skilled foreign workers, industry leaders say.
On April 2, the federal government shocked the southern Arizona business community when it announced it would no longer accept visa applications for foreign workers for the 2008 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
By midday, the government had received 150,000 applications for the 65,000 available H-1B foreign-worker visas, according to the Department of Homeland Security. It was the first day employers could apply for them.
“It’s a catastrophe,” said Robert Breault of the Tucson optical engineering firm Breault Research.
The cap had never been reached so quickly, and federal officials said a lottery will determine who gets a visa. Those who do not will have to wait another year to reapply.
Breault said his firm and many local ones like it depend on foreigners, often with doctoral and master’s degrees from the University of Arizona, because the U.S. doesn’t produce enough highly skilled workers.
Because of the visa shortage, Breault last year was unable to hire Yukika Amma, a Japanese intern from UA’s Eller School of Business and Public Administration, when she graduated. Breault Research exports 70 percent of its software, and he hoped Amma would help open markets in Asia.
“It decreased my potential growth,” Breault said. “We’re an $8 million company and growing, but we’re trying to compete with handcuffs on.”
The government created the H-1B program in 1990, allowing businesses to hire foreigners when they were unable to find American workers. The program requires employers to pay the prevailing wage, which is the wage paid to the majority performing similar work. The program initially had a cap of 65,000 visas, but was temporarily expanded to 195,000 in the mid-1990s to meet growing demand from employers during the dot.com boom.
In 2003 Congress allowed the cap to return to 65,000. It has been met earlier each year since then – first in August, then in May and now April.
Employers call the cap arbitrary and out of step with the growing economy.
Joanne Lagasse-Long, director of UA’s international student programs and services, said the cap could reduce the ability of U.S. universities to attract “the best and brightest” from around the world.
She said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. has made it harder for international students to come to the United States and attain work visas once they graduate.
In contrast, countries such Canada and Australia are offering more work visas to attract students who might otherwise have come to the United States.
“Are we going to lose our edge in our research if all of these researchers are turning to other countries for their education?” Lagasse-Long asked.
Amma, the student Breault couldn’t hire, has lost two job offers because of visa problems and plans to return to Japan in May, when her training visa with Toyota in New York expires.
It’s frustrating, she said. The U.S. welcomes the high fees and tuition international students pay, she said, “but once we finish school and we can earn money, they say ‘no.’ That’s a little unfair. We worked so hard for our degrees.”
Tuition for out-of-state and foreign students at UA is more than double the rate for in-state students.
For the last three years, Breault has traveled to Washington, D.C., along with about 350 other scientists to lobby congressman and senators to try to increase the visa cap.
The effort has been futile because visas are connected to stalled immigration reform legislation.
Last month, U.S. Reps. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., introduced the STRIVE ACT, which would enact comprehensive immigration reform and make up to 180,000 H-1B visas available each year. President Bush has said he is “strongly” in favor of more H-1B visas.
Opposition has come from people such Rob Sanchez, 52, an unemployed electrical engineer, who wants the government to abolish H-1B visas.
“It’s nothing but cheap labor,” he said in a telephone interview from his Chandler home, where he publishes the Job Destruction Newsletter, which he distributes over the Internet.
Sanchez has petitioned federal lawmakers to do away with the visas, which he said cost him jobs at two different firms.
“H-1Bs are flooding the labor market, and there are less and less opportunities for people like me,” he said.
Sanchez believes the program allows employers to hire foreign workers at substantially lower rates than they might pay American workers.
But a 2006 report from the Government Accountability Office found more than 99 percent of employers complied with regulations.
Of the 956,000 applications certified for H-1B visas between January 2002 and September 2005, the GAO found 3,229 listed salaries lower than the prevailing wage.
Gloria Goldman, a Tucson immigration lawyer, disputes the idea that H-1B visas come cheap. Between government and lawyers’ fees, companies can pay up to $5,000 per applicant, she said.
“Certainly they’re not just hiring a foreign worker because they don’t want to hire an American,” Goldman said.
She called the lack of H-1B visas a “debacle.”
Goldman said most of those who applied for visas this year are already in the U.S. and many are working under a short-term training visa.
“These companies who are expecting these employees are just in limbo,” Goldman said. “If they can’t get these people, what will they do for another year?”
David Nicholas of Call and Nicholas, a Tucson geotechnical and mining consulting business, said H-1B visas are crucial for the mining industry, which competes internationally for employees.
“Nobody in the U.S. wants to go into the mining field because it has a bad name,” Nicholas said.
So companies in Canada, Australia and the U.S. look for engineers from countries with heavy mining industries such as Chile, Peru and Indonesia, he said.
Last year, Nicholas lost a Congolese engineer after training him for a year. The man had recently completed a master’s degree at UA, but couldn’t get an H-1B visa, so he took a job in Africa.
Nicholas bristles when he hears people say the H-1B program is about cheap wages. The Congolese engineer would have earned about $60,000, Nicholas said. With the shortage of mining and geological engineers, competition is stiff.
“If you don’t pay them well, they are going to move on,” he said.
Like many employers, Breault is watching Congress carefully and worries about the long-term impact of the visa caps if nothing is done.
“The United States lives on its multicultural background and being able to do the brain drain into the country,” Breault said. “It lives on innovation and entrepreneurship. And when we get dumbed down, then the U.S. economy will be less competitive.”
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Spc. Jesus Edgardo Bustamante Jr. with his parents, Tracy and Jesus Edgardo Sr., after his graduation from basic training
Xochitl Paco carries a Mexican flag during the march along South Sixth Avenue.
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