Congress should fix the H-1B visa program, not abolish it
I am an immigrant to this country. In 2003, I left my entire family behind in the United Kingdom in order to travel to America to study. I am also a beneficiary of the H-1B visa program, a program that has become the latest in a series of hot-button immigration issues to generate controversy in the ongoing Republican presidential-nomination battle.
After I finished graduate school with a doctorate and a desire to teach the next generation of college students, my student visa allowed me only one year of paid employment before I would have to leave the country or face deportation. Applying for and receiving one of the 20,000 H-1B visas set aside for foreign students graduating with advanced degrees, I was able to secure a teaching job and remain in the United States long enough to be eligible for a green card.
I’m one of the success stories of the H-1B program, but in recent years, there have been far too many failures. Large outsourcing companies have increasingly been able to manipulate the system in their favor, displacing American workers and driving down salaries. The issue of H-1B visa abuse reared its head at one of the Republican debates, and some on the right have called for Congress to pass legislation to abolish them.
The solution is for Congress to fix the H-1B program, not to end it entirely.
Created by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the H-1B visa program represented a radical shift from the immigration system it replaced. Prior policies had set quotas for immigrants based on national origin, which discriminated heavily against immigrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
In contrast, the H-1B program emphasizes skills over skin color and family relationships over diplomatic ones. It was designed to allow U.S. businesses to fill specialized positions with skilled foreign labor on a temporary basis. Since 1965, countless foreign workers have taken advantage of it, many of whom have gone on to become naturalized U.S. citizens.
More controversial, though, than the 20,000 visas allocated to college postgraduates, like myself, are the 65,000 remaining ones earmarked for immigrants with specialized training or a bachelor’s degree in the field in which they are being hired. Applications for these visas have increasingly become dominated by large outsourcing companies, which overwhelm the system with tens of thousands of applications at once and squeeze out those genuinely in need of the program’s assistance.
Every year since 2013 has seen the number of applications dramatically exceed the quota. In 2014, the 20 largest companies, 13 of which were global outsourcing firms, gobbled up 40 percent of the available visas. This past year, 233,000 applications were received in just seven days alone, two-thirds of which ended up being denied. This is not the way to run an immigration system.
On Nov.10, a bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress by Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican, and Dick Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat, designed to fix the H-1B visa program. The bill would close the loophole that allows large corporations to rig the H-1B lottery to ship jobs overseas. It calls for a crackdown on outsourcing companies by limiting H-1B applications to only those employers hiring 50 or fewer workers, and for which H-1B recipients represent less than 50 percent of their employees.
It also provides for increased scrutiny of employers to ensure that they aren’t abusing the system, as well as explicitly prohibiting the replacement of American workers, whether welders or philosophers, with H-1B visa holders.
These reforms should assuage the concerns of even the most vociferous of opponents. I support the Senate bill, I support legal immigration, and I support giving others the same opportunity that I was lucky enough to receive — the opportunity to live in this great nation and pursue the American dream.