H-1Bs Drive Down High Tech Wages

• Author: Dana Rohrabacher
• Position: Congressman
• Pages: 02

Page 2

Congressman, Mr. Rohrabacher represents California's 46th District in the United States

Congress.

A conference sponsored by the law firm of Cohen & Grigsby caused a great deal of controversy earlier this year. The conference was advising business owners and employers how to make the H1-B visa laws work for them, and against American job seekers. Ironically, the same gee-whiz high tech wizardry that allows you to post videos online caught big business in the act of using H-1B visas to drive down wages for high tech employees that developed these systems.

In the video taken at the seminar, which was posted on numerous web sites, Lawrence Lebowitz, Vice President of Marketing at Cohen & Grigsby, says:

"Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified U.S. worker . . . our objective is to get this person a green card."¹

Mr. Lebowitz goes on to advise firms how to avoid finding a potential American applicant by advertising in out of the way or irrelevant places, yet still comply with the law.

"Clearly we are not going to find a place where the applicants are most numerous," says Lebowitz, "we're going to find a place where-again we're complying with the law-[we're] hoping and likely not to find qualified worker applicants."²

And if somehow a qualified American sneaks through and applies for the deliberately misplaced and under-advertised position? Not to worry, Mr. Lebowitz reassures his audience:

"If someone looks like they are very qualified, if necessary schedule an interview; go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them."³

Clearly, no tweaks in the law, no rework of the regulations, will help defend Americans against this cynical and brutal attempt to chase them away from the best paying jobs. It is high time to admit the only thing H1-B visas do is drive down wages. Instead of investing in training and educating our own work force, businesses use H-1B visas to both avoid investing in their work force and drive down the real market price for labor.

The current system creates the looming threat of flooding the market with H-1B visas if Americans will not accept the wages businesses offer rather than what the market rate for their skills actually dictates. Then businesses force American IT employees to either accept lower wages or lose out to a foreign worker who will. Of course, such tactics are meant to be illegal, but as the Cohen & Grigsby video demonstrates, attorneys and businesses have traditionally...