U.S. programs that allow entry to tens of thousands
of permanent and temporary foreign workers fail to protect U.S
workers' jobs or wages and are riddled with abuses that in many
cases have made their original intent a ''sham,'' according to
an audit by the Labor Department's inspector general. The audit,
a draft summary of which was obtained by the Washington Post,
found that employers routinely flout requirements
to search for U.S. workers for job openings and to pay the
prevailing wage to the foreigners they hire. The inspector general's
office, an ''independent agency'' within the Labor Department,
decides autonomously which programs to audit, a departmentofficial said.
'Unique' skills
''The inspector general's report confirms what we've been saying
for years,'' said Labor Secretary Robert Reich. In particular,
a program that allows annual admissions of up to 65,000 foreign
workers with ''unique'' skills under temporary H1B visas ''doesn't
work,'' he said.
Employers strongly defend the H1B program
and a category ofemployment-based permanent immigration that makes
available up to 140,000 immigrant visas for foreign workers and their
families.
Businesses and immigration advocates say the programs help
supply U.S. high-tech firms and other businesses with the world's
''best and the brightest'' in an increasingly competitive global
economy and that U.S. workers are protected by existing rules.
Among them are Labor Department requirements that employers search
for qualified U.S. workers before sponsoring foreign workers as
permanent immigrants and pay ''prevailing wages'' to foreign
temporary workers.
'Shopping' services
The inspector general's report said,
however, ''the foreign labor programs we audited do not protect U.S.
workers' jobs
or wages from foreign labor because neither program meets its
legislative intent.''
The program for certifying permanent
employment-based immigrants instead allows foreigners already in the United
States to obtain permanent resident status ''and then shop
their services in competition with equally or more qualified
U.S. workers without regard to prevailing wage,'' the report
said.
The H1B program, it said, largely ''serves as a
probationary try-out employment program for illegal aliens, foreign
students
and foreign visitors to determine if they will be sponsored for
permanent status.''
'Sham' tests
Of 24,150 foreigners for whom employers in 12
states applied for immigrant status during fiscal 1993, the audit found,
98.7
percent were already in the United States and 74.1 percent were
already working for the employer when the application was filed.
Of those already employed, 16.4 percent were working illegally,
it found.
Market tests for qualified U.S. workers are
''perfunctory at best and a sham at worst,''
the report said.
Advertisements or postings for those
24,150 jobs as required by the Labor Department resulted in 165,000
applicants, but in
more than 99 percent of the cases a U.S. worker was not hired,
the audit found. This was because the employers were simply
posting the jobs to meet the requirement, a department spokesman
said.
The audit, begun in April 1995, also showed that few of
the employers surveyed could prove that they paid their H1B workers
the prevailing wage. The auditors reported that nearly 75 percent
of H1B visa holders worked for employers ''who did not adequately
document'' their wages, that nearly 13 percent ''were paid below
the advertised prevailing wage and that 10 percentwere either
illegally treated as independent contractors to avoid payroll and
administrative costs or contracted out to other employers.
Firm
denials
To preserve the current system, employers have spearheaded a campaign
tostrip
provisions on legal immigration from bills in Congress to reformimmigration
laws.
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