IEEE-USA advocates a balanced
approach to strengthening the United States' high tech workforce, which
includes incentives for continuing education of America's engineers and computer science
professionals, retraining of displaced professionals, improved K-12 math and science education
to ensure the future workforce pipeline, and immigration
reforms that facilitate permanent immigration visas
for U.S.-educated students and other skilled foreign-born engineers and scientists seeking U.S.
citizenship (i.e. "Green Cards Not Guest Workers") when the demand for
skilled workers outstrips the domestic supply.
IEEE-USA is concerned by
abuses of the H-1B (non-immigrant skilled guestworker visa) and the L-1 (intra-company transfer) programs.
Educate yourself on the issues and
communicate your views to your U.S. Representative and Senators. Try
to reach them through a local town hall meeting or district office visit.
If that fails, call their office or send a personal e-mail or fax.
Tell them your own employment story, and how importation of temporary
workers is affecting you and your family. Urge them to focus on the
problem of engineering unemployment and its causes. Ask them where they
stand on the H-1B and L-1 temporary worker programs.
Respond to IEEE-USA Action Alerts.
You can use IEEE-USA's Legislative
Action Center to send messages, or join the
CARE Team to help us on this and other issues by volunteering as a
grassroots advocate
Other Information Resources
The following links are provided by the IEEE-USA as information
resources to aid the reader to better understand different perspectives
on the issue. The IEEE-USA does not necessarily agree with or support
the views or positions expressed at these sites, nor can it guarantee
the accuracy of the information provided:
Other Position Statements
National Society of Professional Engineers on
H-1B and L-1 Visas (March 2004)
Much attention has been
focused on a recent
conference captured on video in which a Pittsburgh law firm
counsels clients how to meet U.S. law requiring employers to prove
they have tried to find U.S. workers before applying for a green
card for a foreign worker. In the video, the moderator
comments: “Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and
interested U.S. worker. And, you know, that in a sense sounds funny,
but it’s what we’re trying to do here. We are complying with the law
fully, but our objective is to get this person a green card and to
get through the labor certification process.”
The video also counsels employers how to place job advertisements in
newspapers where they would be less likely to find qualified U.S.
workers: “So certainly we are not going to try to find a place where
the applicants are going to be the most numerous. We’re going to try
to find a place where, again, we’re complying with the law and
hoping – and likely – not to find qualified and interested worker
applicants.”
Dr. Ron Hira gives a presentation
for the Economic Policy Institute's Shared Prosperity Agenda on the
current problems with the H-1B and L-1 guest worker Visas. The full,
edited video is available
here.
Portland Press Herald
Investigative Series Takes a Critical Look at Visa System for Foreign
High-Tech Workers Stories
examine use and misuse of visas by small high-tech staffing companies in
Maine. more
