Cincinnati Can't Do Without H-1B
Cincinnati Can't Do Without H-1B
Date: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 10:34 AM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
by Rob Sanchez
April 12, 2005 No. 1232
I nearly fell of my chair from laughter when I read this whopper. Guo's
specialized skill is that she has an MBA and does scheduling, and
McKinley claims that she is the only one that applied for the job.
Perhaps that's because he was only willing to pay a Chinese style
salary and Guo was the only one that was told about the job opening!
For Ron McKinley, vice president of human resources at
Children's, Guo represents the kind of expertise he could
only have acquired through the federal H-1B visa program,
which offers temporary visas to foreign workers. The program
is designed to attract scientists, programmers, technicians
and teachers with specialized skills not readily available
in the United States.
By doing a search on the H-1B LCA database at http://www.h1b.info/ or
at ZaZona you can see the huge numbers of H-1Bs this hospital hires.
The job titles include technicians, systems analysts, programmers,
childlife specialists, research assistants, research fellows, speech
pathologists, dieticians, etc. etc.
McKinley didn't stop there. The next statement is one of the most
absurd things I have read on H-1B for at least three days!
"Without the H-1B (program), we would not be able to staff
the place," McKinley said. "We would not be able to do
many of the things we do."
McKinley reveals the real reason he uses H-1B a few paragraphs later:
It's harder to get people to move here. Our view is that
there ought to be more H-1B visas available. They ought
to be easier to get."
In McKinley's view Cincinnati is such a lousy place to live that the
only way he can get anyone to work at his hospital is by bringing them
in from countries like China. If all the employers in Cincinnati have
attitudes like his, perhaps that explains why the city leads the nation
in population decline - people are leaving because nobody there will
hire an American citizen. Unfortunately they all seem to be coming to
Arizona to glut our labor market and crowd our streets.
(Warning for anyone in Cincinnati that reads this newsletter: Don't
think you just waltz into Arizona and find a job because our employers
are no better, and we have bozos like McCain to deal with. I would
rather deal with the Mafia in Cincinnati than the crooks that Arizona
voters elect to public office!)
See:
Cincinnati leads nation in population decline
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/06/24/loc_loc1acensus.html
I am flattered that the writer mentions my efforts as well of those of
some of the other organizations that are working to bring sanity back
to our nation, but he gives us way more credit than we deserve:
Grass-roots groups like The Organization for the Rights of
American Workers (www.toraw.org) and Web-based campaigns,
such as zazona.com and h1b.info, are railing against the
use of work visas and off-shoring by U.S. companies.
The critics are having an impact. In 2004, Congress lowered
the cap on H-1B visas issued during the fiscal year from
195,000 to 65,000. But many want to see the program dismantled
entirely.
I have to dispute how much impact any of us have had. The reduction to
65,000 was not a response to criticisms of the program or because of
pressure any of us put on Congress because they don't care what we
think. That reduction was written in the 2000 increase that mandated an
increase of visas to 195,000 with a sunset provision that in 2004 it be
reduced to 65,000. In other words, the number would be reduced no
matter what we did. We were powerless to stop the increase of 20,000
visas that Congress passed last year and to add further insult to
injury the Department of Homeland Security recently decided to issue
10,000 visas without Congressional approval. About the only impact we
have had is to keep Congress from giving employers an unlimited H-1B
program, and I'm not sure how long we can hold the line on that one.
For those of you that have been on my newsletter a long time you can
skip this and go to the article because I know I'm starting to sound
like a broken record.
When a company wants to fill a position with a foreign
worker, it files an LCA with the U.S. Department of Labor,
which certifies that the company is unable to fill the job
with a qualified American worker.
It irritates me to no end that the H-1B program has been around for 15
years and yet the press is still printing the myth that companies are
required to look for American workers. That wasn't true in 1990 and
it's not true now, so why do these dunderheads keep writing the same
mistruth?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.mlive.com/business/ambizdaily/bizjournals/index.ssf?/base/abd-1/1113241201112470.xml
Federal program meant for hard-to-fill jobs, but critics cite company
misuse
Monday, April 11, 2005
Dan Monk - Cincinnati Business Courier
Her boss calls Ming Guo the world's only human resources statistician.
When Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center hired the
Chinese-born MBA grad in 2001, Guo was the only applicant. Since then,
her number-crunching skills have been used to improve patient
scheduling and measure the effectiveness of the hospital's public
relations team. She's been working on a statistical model that can
forecast all labor costs associated with the recruitment of a new
researcher or medical specialist. And she's starting a one-year study
of nurses in the United States and overseas, hoping to quantify why
nurses are leaving the profession.
For Guo, the work is precisely what she had in mind when she left China
in 1999 to study business at the University of Akron.
"It's a free and very enticing environment I wanted to grow in," said
Guo, a 33-year-old Westwood resident.
For Ron McKinley, vice president of human resources at Children's, Guo
represents the kind of expertise he could only have acquired through
the federal H-1B visa program, which offers temporary visas to foreign
workers. The program is designed to attract scientists, programmers,
technicians and teachers with specialized skills not readily available
in the United States.
"Without the H-1B (program), we would not be able to staff the place,"
McKinley said. "We would not be able to do many of the things we do."
Plenty of local companies agree. A Courier review of federal records
indicated roughly 1,000 companies that operate in Cincinnati sought
permission to hire more than 18,000 foreign employees in the last five
years. Consulting firms, universities and medical organizations are the
biggest users of the program. Children's is an active participant,
filing 130 applications to hire 792 employees since 2001. Not all of
those applications led to actual hirings. McKinley said the hospital
employs 178 H-1B visa recipients, with approvals for 26 more new hires
in process. McKinley makes it clear he'd like to hire more.
"We're talking about jobs that require specialized education and
skills," McKinley said. "There just aren't enough Americans coming out
to fill these jobs. They may be available to people on the East or West
Coast, but they're less available to people in this part of the
country. It's harder to get people to move here. Our view is that there
ought to be more H-1B visas available. They ought to be easier to get."
On that point, McKinley would get an argument from Al Westerman. The
50-year-old Fairfield resident is nine months into a so-far fruitless
job search. An Army veteran with a master's degree and more than two
decades' experience as a project manager, Westerman is convinced that
his hunt for employment has been impeded by the ready availability of
cheap foreign labor. On Christmas Eve, he learned a job he thought he'd
landed in Louisiana would be taken instead by a Mexican man. During
more than a dozen job interviews, Westerman said he has been surprised
by the number of offices where he "hardly saw a white face in the
crowd."
Similar tales of woe are being circulated by displaced computer
programmers from the northeastern states to Silicon Valley. Grass-roots
groups like The Organization for the Rights of American Workers
(www.toraw.org) and Web-based campaigns, such as zazona.com and
h1b.info, are railing against the use of work visas and off-shoring by
U.S. companies.
"We have members all over the country who've gone bankrupt. They're
selling cars, driving 18-wheelers. These are highly qualified,
high-tech workers," said John Baumann, TORAW's founder.
The critics are having an impact. In 2004, Congress lowered the cap on
H-1B visas issued during the fiscal year from 195,000 to 65,000. But
many want to see the program dismantled entirely.
"Industry is taking full advantage of it at the expense of the American
worker," Westerman said. "Look at the trade numbers. We're a consumer
of the world's products. They're not doing their part by consuming our
products. And now they're sending their workers over here, too? When
will it end?"
Not any time soon, if federal records are any indication. The records,
known as Labor Condition Applications, or LCAs, are posted online at
h1b.info. They were obtained by the anti-H-1B group via the Freedom of
Information Act. To understand what the records mean, you need some
background on how the process works.
When a company wants to fill a position with a foreign worker, it files
an LCA with the U.S. Department of Labor, which certifies that the
company is unable to fill the job with a qualified American worker and
verifies that the company is paying a fair-market wage for the
position. Sometimes companies file an LCA for a single job; other times
they file a single application for 50 to 100 similar positions. All of
the applications carry a salary estimate, along with a starting and
ending date for the position. Once approved, companies are free to hire
foreign applicants, although not every approval leads to a hiring.
The University of Cincinnati employs a "couple hundred" H-1B visa
recipients at any given time, while records indicate it has filed 501
applications for 530 positions since 2001. The clinical trials firm
Kendle International Inc. has filed 33 applications for 249 positions,
but the company said in a statement that it employs "approximately 20
associates on H-1B visas, including clinical research associates and
biostatisticians."
Critics claim companies conceal their use of the H-1B program, fearing
public backlash. In some cases, companies file under multiple names or
use temporary employment agencies or consulting firms to file
applications on their behalf. Cincinnati-based outsourcing company
Convergys Corp. has filed 108 applications under 15 different names,
seeking permission to hire 1,323 people in Ohio, Florida, Utah and
Texas. It has filled computer analyst positions, as well as marketing
staffers, statisticians, associates and consultants. Convergys would
not say how many H-1B workers it employs, except to describe it as a
"small number ... in relation to our entire U.S. employee base."
While the program was designed to attract workers with specialized
skill sets, not every job in the h1b.info database appears to be hard
to fill. For example, one application seeks permission to hire managers
of local Arby's restaurants.
In 2004, UC's application for an assistant ticket manager was twice
rejected by the Labor Department, which "didn't buy that the person
needed a degree in sports management" to fill the job, said Ron
Cushing, the school's director of International Student Services.
Cushing said the H-1B visa program is a valuable tool for the
university, which has trouble finding postdoctoral researchers willing
to work in the United States on an academic salary.
"We want to hire the best person for the job, no matter where they're
from," Cushing said. "Without (foreign workers) our research mission
would be highly compromised. We need them to do business."
www.ZaZona.com
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