S.2266 - H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2015 - Your candidate's position?

[MH1]

I am looking for information regarding each candidate's position on this bill.

The bill is reported has having been co-written by Grassley and Durbin. It is listed as sponsored by Grassley, which is a good thing in a republican controlled congress.

Other co-sponsors are:

Sherrod Brown (D)
Richard Blumenthal (D)
Bill Nelson (R)
Jeff Sessions (R)


More info here:
https://www.opencongress.org/bill/s2266-114/show


I note that the one candidate who is in the Senate and who has an actual opportunity to endorse the bill by co-sponsoring it, has not done so. HOWEVER, it is quite possible that it is better for the bill that Bernie Sanders NOT co-sponsor it. If he co-sponsored it then that brings presidential politics into play. Also notice that it currently has an equal number of D and R co-sponsors, and adding Bernie would throw that out of balance if there wasn't a matching republican. This is probably politically calculated to give the bill the best possible chance of passing. Of course, that then makes it awkward for Bernie to announce direct and complete support for it. But he still should be able to say something.

And I'd like to know what the other candidates have to say about it.


On a side note, when I google "H1B Durbin" in order to find something about it, almost all the articles are from publications that seem to cater to Indians. The only US article I saw was in the Wall Street Journal blog. Excerpt:

Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin last week introduced a bill that would require all companies that want to hire workers under H-1Bs to first try to hire U.S. citizens.

In addition, firms that employ more than 50 people and have more than half of their staff on H-1B and L-1 visas would be barred from hiring new workers on H-1Bs.

H-1Bs are for skilled workers, and L-1 visas are for those with specialized knowledge who are transferred to the U.S. within their company.

The U.S. Department of Labor would be able to monitor and penalize firms that don’t comply under the proposed law.

“For years, foreign outsourcing companies have used loopholes in the laws to displace qualified American workers and facilitate the outsourcing of American jobs,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement. The bill “would end these abuses and protect American and foreign workers from exploitation.”

[MH1]

1. Link to bill text:

I thought Open Congress would have it but couldn't find it there, so here's the Thomas link:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2266/text

[PatrickforO]

2. I'm going to get a little wonky on you MH1.

One of the good things the Obama administration has done is make USDOL grants available to train American workers in high skilled jobs so they don't have to bring H1B people. There are several good reasons for investing in training here and replacing foreign nationals here on H1B visas:

1. An H1B worker is gonna 'remit' at least 10% of their income (send to family in their native land); that means that a substantial portion of their worker earnings is not spent locally for goods and services

2. It costs a business upwards of $5K for each high skilled H1B worker. I had raw data and found these workers were then hired between the 25th and median percentile wage range, which means companies aren't saving that much on them

3. In every occupational case (system analyst, software development engineer, network and system administrator, web developer, etc.), there WERE American workers in the local area in the workforce center database who ostensibly had those skills, which raises the question as to why these companies need H1B people in the first place (I did this work in 2012-2013 when unemployment was significantly higher)

Ah, but that is a segue to the fabled 'other hand.'

So, 'on the other hand,' (I can say that because I'm an economist), many areas in the nation are now in full employment. What this looks like on the ground is that the U-3 unemployment rate (what the press reports monthly) is 4.9% or under. Now, the labor market is very much governed by supply and demand.

In a high unemployment market (6% or above) we see skilled workers held idle because their are not enough jobs and too many of them. Conversely in a low unemployment market (4.9% or below) we see the opposite; there are too few workers to fill too many jobs. 23 of the 50 states, and Puerto Rico are now in just such a tight labor market. These are states that have large urban areas that are currently booming, like Utah, Colorado, and Texas. In these regions, employers are finding it progressively more difficult to find and hire highly skilled STEM people. In addition, in some of these regions, the training pipeline (colleges and other postsecondary institutions) aren't graduating enough people to meet demand.

Currently the 'cap' on H1B visas is 65,000 new foreign workers per year. There are about 650K H1B workers currently in the USA. Now, to put this in perspective, our civilian labor force is 157 million people. So, H1B workers currently make up only 4/10 of 1% of our labor force.

For this reason, and thinking about the economy in my own region, and about how some businesses - small businesses run by people like you and I, not billionaires, are having to turn away business because they can't find qualified people (especially true of software development engineers and accountants in my own region). This is not good because a sensibly growing economy offers opportunity for young skilled workers to get good jobs and get ahead. Those regions are known in urban planning circles as 'opportunity' cities.

In the final analysis, this law may be a good idea because most of the companies employing H1B people are leviathans who might not even be paying income tax on billions in profits - companies like IBM and GE and some of the MIC companies. Small businesses really can't afford H1B workers. I would exclude L-1s because they have specialized knowledge. I know it sounds good from either a xenophobic (GOP) perspective or a 'hire American' (Dem) perspective to limit all of them severely, but these L-1s tend to be people the company cannot operate without, and no one can replace them. Can't have that.

H1B people, on the other hand, could well be limited, because then that would force big companies doing business in places like Salt Lake to invest locally in training people so they aren't buried in debt when they graduate from postsecondary training. Some companies are even offering loan forgiveness for specific occupations and when you consider that corporations spend upwards of $250 billion per year on internal training, frittering away most of that on bullshit like 'leadership development,' they could really get some skin in the game.

I'm confident that Clinton will not be for this, nor will Bush or Rubio. They are going to want to raise the cap out of concern for companies that cannot find skilled workers. Trump seems to hate EVERY foreigner at this point, and Carson is hopelessly ignorant, more xanax than man...

Bernie might come out for it, though. But when you consider the right wing is calling him an 'insane 60s hippie' it might be better if he did not. This is probably why Obama has not indicated support either, though he may very well be in the more business oriented camp like Clinton, and the establishment Repubs.

[MH1]

3. Thank you for the wonky analysis.

But I work in the IT industry and have seen abuses first hand. I don't want to go into too much detail about my personal situation but I will tell you it makes me sick to see a young person lose an opportunity to grow their skills, because a company supposedly wants "someone experienced". I'm not talking about a small business that needs to hire a consultant to perform a specific task on a short term basis. I have seen highly qualified, worth-every-penny consultants from India and many other places come into do that work. That's not my issue. My issue is with hiring for permanent positions at a relatively low level of experience, in a company with enough staff that a certain level of OJT can happen. And in fact for a permanent position where a knowledge of the company's specific culture and requirements is needed, there will be some OJT needed anyway. So give me a kid out of college with a good GPA and willing to learn, rather than importing someone who doesn't communicate well and very likely lied on their resume and has half (if that) of the "experience" they claim. Just because you can't find a college kid with that particular acronym on their resume? GMAFB. It's programming. If they know a half dozen programming languages they will easily pick up one more. So the "experience" and "highly skilled" lines are complete bullshit in these circumstances.

The point of the H1B program was supposed to be for highly skilled workers. The way I have seen it used makes a mockery of that.

[PatrickforO]

5. Unintended consequences, you know. The bane of well meaning politicians and

economists everywhere. That's why I'm talking about these big companies putting some skin in the game. Many times they could even get subsidies to do incumbent OJT from their local workforce development regions (Workforce Innovation & Opportunity Act of 2014), if they themselves were willing to put up some money too.

Plus, in regions with full employment, we're gonna have to reach deeper into the 18-24 age group, which tends to have low labor force participation, particularly in the 18-21 age range. We also need to stop being so brutal to our single mothers. Because there's a hell of a lot of them, and if we subsidized childcare at higher levels than Title XX currently allows, and actually trained them instead of forcing them into some bullshit 'work related activity,' many of these young women could perform admirably in high skilled positions. We also have too many ex offenders who were convicted of non-violent crimes. If we can capture (probably a questionable term, sorry) some of these people, provide subsidized employment in conjunction with training, then that is another high-potential group of skilled workers.

The other thing is the foreign nationals that earn degrees in our schools and then are forced to leave the country because of xenophobes. Some of my ancestors came here from Ireland, fleeing the potato famine. Others fled from persecution and famine in Germany. Still others came from Scotland and England. But the reality is that if someone comes here and earns a degree, why kick them out? If we instead offered them a path to citizenship, then we wouldn't need so many H1Bs.

But we do have problems with insufficient training pipeline in some regions in the United States, though. Have to think outside the box to fill these.

[MH1]

6. I mostly agree with your points.

If you take away the H1B or at least require more justification before hiring, you could hopefully motivate companies to explore other talent pools. I don't know much about the Workforce Innovation & Opportunity Act of 2014 but it sounds very much like what I think should happen: companies should be given incentives to develop talent and take risks to give career mobility to difficult or special populations, such as the young, the ex-offenders, or veterans. But if the relative cost and ease of hiring an H1B outweighs the incentives offered for hiring and developing from those other, local populations, then companies will still go for the H1B, thus blocking those opportunities for Americans. The answer, I believe, is to reduce and restrict the availability of H1B to truly justifiable situations; and make the visa really temporary.

[MH1]

4. I do agree that it is probably better for the bill if the "insane hippie" doesn't cosponsor it.

I thought it would be interesting to throw out a hard-core policy topic for discussion here in GDP. I've had about enough of polls and "he's eeee-vil" and "SHE'S eeee-vil" yada yada.

So far other than your response, the silence has been deafening. If I could catch all those crickets I could have a nice feast.