Congress won't debate H-1B visas until next session

Congress won't debate H-1B visas until next session
MANHASSET, N.Y. — Preliminary hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives on the issue of soaring EE unemployment might take place as early as September, but engineers can expect no legislative action until next year on the incendiary question of H-1B visas. The H-1B program, which allows high-tech employers to recruit temporary foreign workers for critical jobs if they cannot find qualified U.S. candidates, is scheduled for reauthorization in 2003.

A spokesman for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, chaired by Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, said committee members were concerned about rising engineering unemployment and called U.S. engineers a "precious asset to the nation's economy." "Federal policy ought to reflect that," the spokesman said, adding that the committee could commence hearings next month.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Labor, Education and Pensions, said the committee did not have time to consider holding hearings on engineering unemployment before the Senate's August recess. The Senate expects to revisit the issue of H-1B visas next year, the spokesman said, and will try to "balance the needs and rights of workers with the needs of industry."

Also revisiting the issue next year, Rep. Thomas G. Tancredo (R-Colo.), will push legislation, first introduced last November, to cut the H-1B visa cap from 195,000 per year to 65,000, the pre-1999 level. The original bill died in committee.

IEEE-USA president LeEarl Bryant wrote to all 535 members of Congress last month to decry "management practices that make engineers' jobs less secure and careers in engineering increasingly untenable" and to ask the House and Senate to take another look at the H-1B program. Bryant charged in her letter that the "all-time high" EE unemployment in the second quarter was part of a paradigm shift in engineering utilization that renders American EEs a "disposable labor commodity."

"We are just trying to draw attention to the issue and step up the level of interest among our members," said an IEEE-USA spokesman this past week, when asked about Congress' seemingly slow official response.

Unemployment rise

Bryant's letter was sent on July 12, days after the U.S. Department of Labor released data indicating that EE joblessness had jumped 13 percent during the second quarter to 34,000, raising the unemployment rate from 4.1 percent in the first quarter to 4.8 percent.

Many engineers believe the H-1B program is contributing to the unemployment of U.S. engineers. The program allows skilled foreign workers, such as architects, engineers, computer programmers, accountants and doctors, to obtain a visa that is good for three years and may be extended for another three, if jobs are waiting for them.

The Workforce Investment Act mandates that fees paid by companies that file for H-1B workers go toward funding Labor Department programs to retrain U.S. workers in high-tech skills. Making sure that goal is met is part of the House Committee on Education and Workforce's agenda, its spokesman said. The committee wants to "make sure the programs implemented by Department of Labor under the Workforce Investment Act benefit the American work force," he said.

As Congress ponders what its moves will be following this fall's midterm elections, IEEE-USA and other engineering organizations will continue to monitor the jobless situation. The professional association expects in a few weeks to post the results of a survey of 3,000 members who have reported being unemployed this year. The data will be used to create career support programs and public policy initiatives, the IEEE-USA spokesman said.

Meanwhile, some critics of the H-1B visa program believe that shortage shouters are already preparing for the H-1B debates of 2003. Robert Rivers, who works with the American Engineering Association, criticizes a survey commissioned by the Information Technology Association of America reporting that hiring managers will seek to fill 1.1 million jobs in the next 12 months and that almost 600,000 of those positions will go unfilled due to a lack of qualified workers.

Rivers contends that the survey exaggerates the projected need for IT workers and that the association misrepresented its data. Harris Miller, president of ITAA, dismissed those charges, saying "critics focus on the part that they don't like" rather than looking at the whole report. "If [we] wanted to inflate numbers of IT workers needed, why would we have released information about the numbers of jobs lost [in 2001]?" Miller asked.