In a report presented to congress, the Government Accountability Office concluded that 94% of foreign worker H-1B visa recipients are not "Fully Competent."
This indicates that they are entry level workers gaining experience. Many of these opportunities U.S. college graduates are not even allowed to compete for. They don't even know about the opportunity.
DKOS parents and relatives of students in college, how do you feel about the fact that your students are never even going to know they have been excluded for consideration for jobs in their own country. Do you not care about this issue? Is it OK with you that it is completely legal for corporations to bring in foreign workers while your graduates and unemployed highly skilled neighbors don't even know these jobs exist?
In 2011, the GAO completed a study for Congress that concluded a mere 6% of H-1B visa recipients are "Fully Competent" with 54% of H-1B visa recipients being "Entry Level" workers. Tragically many disenfranchised US STEM workers, as their last official duty of being an employed US STEM worker, had to train their replacement in order to receive a severance package.
With this GAO report at their disposal, why are so many democratic representatives in Washington, including the president pushing for an expansion of this awful H-1B visa program to replace and bypass U.S. workers?
I can see the Republican party fighting to bring in cheap indentured labor to benefit the business community to the detriment of the workers, but with this report at their disposal, why are so many Democrats doing the same. Isn't the Democratic party supposed to be the party of labor? The silence is deafening.
Most people believe it is illegal for corporations to bypass the U.S. workforce but this is not the case. Corporations can openly do this in full compliance with the law.
Why has not one Democratic representative put forward a bill this year to make it a requirement that a company must prove that they allow U.S. workers to compete for jobs that they wish to import workers for.
Can we really be surprised at the jobless recovery? Why is it a mystery?
Government Accountability Office Report
Government Accountability Office Report - PDF
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-11-26, a report to congressional committees.
Why GAO Did This Study:
Congress created the H-1B program in 1990 to enable U.S. employers to
hire temporary, foreign workers in specialty occupations. The law
capped the number of H-1B visas issued per fiscal year at 65,000.
Since then, the cap has fluctuated with legislative changes. Congress
asked GAO to assess the impact of the cap on the ability of domestic
companies to innovate, while ensuring that U.S. workers are not
disadvantaged. In response, GAO examined what is known about (1)
employer demand for H-1B workers; (2) how the cap affects employer
costs and decisions to move operations overseas; (3) H-1B worker
characteristics and the potential impact of raising the cap; and (4)
how well requirements of the H-1B program protect U.S. workers. GAO
analyzed data from 4 federal agencies; interviewed agency officials,
experts, and H-1B employers; and reviewed agency documents and
literature.
What GAO Found:
In most years, demand for new H-1B workers exceeded the cap: From 2000
to 2009, demand for new H-1B workers tended to exceed the cap, as
measured by the numbers of initial petitions submitted by employers
who are subject to the cap (see figure 1). There is no way to
precisely determine the level of any unmet demand among employers,
since they tend to stop submitting (and the Department of Homeland
Security stops tracking) petitions once the cap is reached each year.
When we consider all initial petitions, including those from
universities and research institutions that are not subject to the
cap, we find that demand for new H-1B workers is largely driven by a
small number of employers. Over the decade, over 14 percent of all
initial petitions were submitted by cap-exempt employers, and only a
few employers (fewer than 1 percent) garnered over one-quarter of all
H-1B approvals.
...
Restricted agency oversight and statutory changes weaken protections
for U.S. workers: Elements of the H-1B program that could serve as
worker protections-—such as the requirement to pay prevailing wages,
the visa’s temporary status, and the cap itself—-are weakened by
several factors. First, program oversight is fragmented and
restricted. For example, the Department of Labor’s review of H-1B
applications from employers is cursory and limited by law to only
looking for missing information and obvious inaccuracies. Yet a recent
Department of Homeland Security study reported that 21 percent of the
H-1B petitions they examined involved fraud or technical violations.
Second, the H-1B program lacks a legal provision for holding employers
accountable to program requirements when they obtain H-1B workers
through a staffing company . Officials from the
Department of Labor’s investigative office reported receiving the bulk
of their complaints from H-1B workers contracted by staffing companies.
Third, statutory changes made to the H-1B program have, in combination
and in effect, increased the pool of H-1B workers beyond the cap and
lowered the bar for eligibility. Specifically, these changes have
increased the available exemptions to the cap; offered unlimited
extensions on the visa while holders apply for permanent residency;
and broadened the job and skill categories for eligibility. Regarding
the latter, over 50 percent of employers requesting H-1B workers
between June 2009 and July 2010 categorized their prospective H-1B
workers as receiving entry-level wages, although we cannot tell
whether this trend reflects lower skill levels or other factors.