| Correction: CNN
mistakenly reported that Daniel Soong, a
thirty-year-old technology consultant, was
making $160,000 per year before he was replaced
by an H-1B visa holder. Soong's salary was
actually $60,000 per year prior to losing his
job. The figure has been corrected in the
transcript below. |
Exporting
America (CNN transcript)
Lou
Dobbs Moneyline
CNN
22 May 2003, 6 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., 26 May 2003 The
following is a transcript of a 22 May Lou
Dobbs Moneyline report which featured an
interview with IEEE-USA Research and Development Policy Committee Chair Ron Hira.
Hira, a research scholar at Columbia
University's Center for Science, Policy and
Outcomes in Washington, D.C., spoke with CNN's
Kitty Pilgrim about H-1B, L-1 and offshore
outsourcing issues, as part of Moneyline's
ongoing series of special reports,
"Exporting America."
TRANSCRIPT
ANNOUNCER:
Tonight, we continue our series of special
reports, "Exporting America." This
country's unemployment rate rose to six percent
last month matching an eight-year high. Nearly
nine million Americans are out of work. Many are
bitter because their jobs are going to foreign
workers who came to this country on special
visas called H-1B.
Kitty
Pilgrim reports.
(BEGIN
VIDEOTAPE)
KITTY
PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over):
Mike Roberts was laid off from his technology
consultant job in California. He sold his house
and is living in a hotel room with his family
and plans to leave California for good when his
daughter finishes the school year. He says the
company he worked for brought in a wave of
foreign workers on H-1B visas. He eventually was
replaced.
MICHAEL
ROBERTS, TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT: They were
bringing in consultants like one, two, three
every week, all H-1Bs, so you start asking and
then you start discovering they're all coming
through just one or two agencies and you realize
they're not even considering American citizens
at all.
PILGRIM:
Thirty-year-old Daniel Soong was making $60,000
a year but no longer. He lost his job to an H-1B
visa worker. The former consultant now can't
find a job and lives with his parents. He talks
about a recent job interview that went nowhere.
DANIEL
SOONG, TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT: They were just
interviewing me in order to satisfy the equal
opportunity requirements of the state so they
wouldn't be discriminating against American
citizens, but in reality they had no intentions
of hiring me and they wanted to hire an H-1B
visa candidate.
PILGRIM:
The H-1B visa was born in the tech room of the
early 1990s. There were not enough American
workers, so employers asked for a special visa
to bring in college educated workers from
overseas to fill specialized jobs.
In 1992,
the H-1B visa let in a maximum number of 65,000
workers, but by the end of the decade that
number jumped to 195,000 every year and that
doesn't count visa renewals. For example, in
2001, 342,000 people renewed their H-1B visa.
RON
HIRA, IEEE-USA CHAIR: Usually in the
technology area that you would bring an H-1B
worker in temporarily. Unfortunately, the
program has changed into instead of being a last
resort the H-1Bs have become in some cases, you
know, a first choice.
PILGRIM:
Peter Bennett started a Web site complaining
about the H-1B visas. Then it gets 1,500 hits a
week on his Web site.
PETE
BENNETT, NOMOREH1B.COM: Across the country,
workers are being displaced wholesale. Entire
teams are brought in to replace American workers
and where they're being forced to train their
replacements.
PILGRIM:
Charles Corry did consultant work in Colorado
Springs with many high tech firms that use the H-1B
visa. He says to him it's clear that companies
give preference to the H-1B applicants because
the workers are willing to put in longer hours
for less money, anything to keep their job in
the states.
CHARLES
CORRY, TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT: They're a
modern version of indentured servitude, the
hours, the salaries typically much lower. I was
probably getting twice what the H-1B visa people
were.
(END
VIDEOTAPE)
PILGRIM:
And the General Accounting Office is looking
into whether the H-1B visa workers are moving
American workers out of their jobs. They expect
to come up with a report by mid-September, and
that timing is critical because Congress decides
on the limits on the number of visas the
following month —
Lou.
DOBBS:
They're studying whether H-1B visa employees are
taking away jobs from Americans?
PILGRIM:
They want to make a study, everything.
DOBBS:
It seems like as they say a no-brainer.
PILGRIM:
Yes. It pretty much is industry knowledge that
they are but they have to make a study of it —
Lou.
DOBBS:
How many are there now, H-1B visa holders in
this country?
PILGRIM:
There's no real clear number because some people
go back. Some people stay. Some people stay
without the status.
DOBBS:
What's the best estimate?
PILGRIM:
But they think about a million.
DOBBS:
A million?
PILGRIM:
About a million and the problem is that you can
reapply. You can stay in the country for three
years and then renew it and stay for six, so you
can stay for a long time on this visa.
DOBBS:
Kitty, thank you very much, fascinating, Kitty
Pilgrim.
-
end -
Read
a full transcript of CNN's "Exporting
America," which appeared in a special
holiday Moneyline
on 26 May, online at: www.cnn.com/Transcripts/0305/26/mlld.00.html. |
