Imported Workers Filling U.S. Jobs

Date: Thursday, November 06, 2003 6:29 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

First Data Corporation joins a long list of companies that import
workers on nonimmigrant visas and then force their American employees
to train them. In the end, the Americans are fired once they train
their cheap replacement.

This article is one of the few that makes the point that not all H-1B
and L-1 visas go to specialized high-tech workers. Many of them are
used for unskilled labor.

Cognizant Technology Solutions CEO Kumar Mahadeva argues that his H-1Bs
and L-1s are the "cream of the high-tech crop" and of course they are
the "best and the brightest." If they are so creamy, why do they need
to be trained once they get to the U.S.? Kumar said that what he is
doing is good for the economy. Without a doubt he is getting rich from
the labors of his indentured crew, but to claim that it is good for the
economy of the entire U.S. is arrogant and indefensible.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/22/eveningnews/main579550.shtml

Imported Workers Filling U.S. Jobs

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla., Oct. 22, 2003

Some two million U.S. jobs have gone by the wayside over the last two
years. And at the same time, the number of foreigners granted special
visas to work in the U.S. has risen.

Employers defend the practice. But pink-slipped Americans who've lost
jobs to lower-paid replacements are calling it visa abuse.

Last year, Phil Marraffinni earned a salary of $100,000 as a computer
programmer.

Today he is a handyman because he says workers imported from India took
his job.

"They started bringing them in because, obviously, they would work for
less money," he says.

And when the Indian programmers arrived at the First Data Corporation
in Coral Springs, Florida, Marraffinni had to teach them the system --
effectively training the people who later replaced him.

"I had to give classes. And I wasn't the only one," he says.

An estimated 400,000 American high-tech workers have either lost their
jobs -- or are working for less. While at the same time, 460,000
immigrants brought to America are working in jobs in computer related
fields, reports CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews.

In fact, immigrants with high-tech skills are still being recruited and
arrive in the U.S. on special visas. Workers with "specialized
knowledge" receive the L1 or the H1-B visa - supposedly for "highly
skilled" workers. But the visas often go to unskilled workers, too.

Congress never intended for these visas to be used for low-wage
competition. In fact, sponsoring companies are supposed to try to find
qualified Americans to fill the jobs first.

First Data told CBS News the company "is not replacing employees with
outsourced workers."

And that's true because Marraffinni, like tens of thousands of
Americans, worked under a contract.

Marraffinni told CBS' Andrews a company called Cognizant took the
contract his company used to have.

Cognizant Technology Solutions is a computer services company whose CEO
Kumar Mahadeva freely admits to bringing in hundreds of workers from
India and elsewhere under L1 and H1B visas -- and that, yes, sometimes
this does cost American jobs.

"Sometimes clients do lay off staff. I'm not denying that," Mahdeva
says.

But Mahadeva argues programming jobs are leaving America anyway and
that the workers he sponsors are the cream of the high-tech crop.

"These visas really have helped the U.S. economy by bringing some of
the best and the brightest," he says. "The people that Cognizant brings
into the country have worked with our operations in India for many
years and know our business."

Marraffinni says what's really being stripped from the economy is
wealth. He never thought the prosperity once promised from computer
software would go the way of textiles and steel.

Support this Newsletter and ZaZona.com by donating:
www.zazona.com/Donations.htm

To Subscribe or Unsubscribe send an email to

Back to archives