and colleagues on these newsgroups and in any
other form of media.
Graeme Eisenhofer, Ph.D.
graeme@his.com
_______________________________
rodan_@primenet.com wrote:
>
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.
>
The San Jose Mercury News archives are stored on a
>SAVE (tm) newspaper
>library system from Vu/Text Library Services, a Knight-Ridder
>Inc. company.
>