“Americans Losing Jobs to Legal Foreign Workers”
Ty J. Young Editorial
Illegal immigration gets the majority of the headlines, but guest worker visa’s may be a bigger problem for US citizens. The government’s inability – or unwillingness – to enforce the law causes a significant impact on the wages and job opportunities of everyday Americans.
One of the many methods used to work in the United States legally as a foreign national is obtaining an H1B visa. This visa allows for the “temporary hiring of foreign nationals in specialized occupations.” This has usually come to mean the high tech industry, such as computers, engineering, software production, etc. It has to be an industry where there are few American workers to match the number of available jobs.
I. Positives to H1B Visa Guest Workers:
1) Find talent not found in the US: Although studies are mixed (see our notes below), the H1B visa is designed for industries where we have a labor and talent shortage. This allows US companies to be more competitive by finding and hiring the best talent in the world.
2) Lowers the per employee cost to the company: Lower employee costs means a stronger balance sheet. Stronger balance sheets can mean higher stock values. Higher stock values are better for American 401K’s and retirement plans.
3) The tech gurus favor it: Tech industry leadership – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates – are in favor of expanding the H1B visa program to fill the employment vacancies at their firms. They have argued these special talents are in short supply here in the US.
II. Negatives to H1B Visa Guest Workers:
1) They take jobs from American citizens: It is clear many US citizens in the STEM industries (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) are not getting jobs that are going to foreign nationals. Many US citizens are discouraged from entering the field, because they are aware those jobs are taken first by foreigners.
2) 50% of H1B visas don’t stay and transfer wealth, knowledge, and intellectual property to their home country to compete against us in the marketplace.
3) They lower American wages: H1B visa employees earn less than American employees in 90% of the jobs currently held by foreigners. By definition this has lowered the wages of our citizens.
4) They overstay their visa: 50% stay when their company goes under, fails to renew their visa, or lays them off. They end up on social welfare and they become a cultural problem – they are typically found on the welfare rolls, or working under the table and not paying into the tax base.
5) The H1B visa worker REPLACES an American: The American worker is often forced to train the new foreign hire: the brazen disregard shown for American workers is usually the worst part of the story. Layoffs to hire a foreign national would ONLY occur if you were planning on paying lower wages, and this happens often in the tech industry.
III. The Federal Government’s responsibilities:
1) Change the Laws: H1B visa laws encourage the hiring of foreigners at the expense of American workers.
2) Change the Policy: Like illegal immigrants, the current government has made it a policy to not enforce deportation orders. In many cases, the Feds do not even bother referring the visa violation to court. The wage scale is not enforced, and the result is depressed wages and lost American jobs.
3) Act in Good Faith: Some Government officials appear to prefer foreign workers and importing competition against American citizens. It is the reverse form of off-shoring jobs.
This is an unnerving scenario. Large numbers of foreign nationals remain in the country on expired H1B visas. They are hired for jobs other Americans are qualified to do, and they are depressing our wages because they are doing it for less. These are not immigrants wishing to become Americans; these are guest workers wanting to get an American way of life, without being a citizen.
In a world that government intervention negatively impacts the labor market, it also can negatively affect the financial markets. Call us to find out how to get your money protected from these non-market related issues – protected and earning a reasonable rate of return. 877-912-1919
(http://www.informationweek.com/to-h-1b-or-not-to-h-1b/d/d-id/1056918?)(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html)