lynnf
02-18-2009, 07:40 PM
I'm not putting this here to discuss the H-1B situation or even immigration, but because we face the same kinds of problems across a range of issues - Congress listens to lobbyists, the press doesn't do it's job, etc. this is the pickle we are in.
it makes me mad, and it should make you mad, too. this is from a newsletter put out by Norm Matloff, a professor at UC Davis.
To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter
The subscribers to this e-newsletter consist of journalists, academics,
Capitol Hill staffers and of course most of all, programmers/engineers.
This posting will discuss the first and last of these categories, and
among other things will post a query to the first.
I will end below by posing questions to the journalists. I hope they
read all the way through this somewhat longish posting, but if they wish
to skip right down to the questions at the end, that's fine too.
I often receive e-mail from programmers and engineers, asking why the
issue of foreign workers (H-1B, employment-based green cards) does not
get more traction from the press and Congress. The message enclosed
below, posted here with the permission of the author (though I've
removed identifying information anyway), is typical of such queries.
The easy answer to the question is that the pro-H-1B lobbyists give lots
of money to congressional campaigns, and spend lots of money on the best
PR people, who then "educate" Congress and the press. The types of
groups lobbying include:
* the tech industry (several big organizations, and lots of lobbying
by individual firms)
* the American Immigration Lawyers Association
* academia in general
* the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers
* Indian-American political activist groups (who, like most
ethnic activists, do NOT represent the views of their putative
constituents)
Spending money on the Hill works, of course. Let me repeat the quotes I
gave a couple of days ago (and often in the past): When Congress
enacted an H-1B increase in 2000, Sen. Robert Bennett remarked, "Once
it's clear (the visa bill) is going to get through, everybody signs up
so nobody can be in the position of being accused of being against high
tech. There were, in fact, a whole lot of folks against it, but because
they are tapping the high-tech community for campaign contributions,
they don't want to admit that in public." The Republican
Congressional Campaign Committee Chair, Rep. Tom Davis, said, "This is
not a popular bill with the public. It's popular with the CEOs...This is
a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money."
I normally do not initiate contact people in Congress (though sometimes
I do so at the request of the Programmers Guild and other H-1B critic
activists). Thus I cannot claim to be an expert in all aspects of how
H-1B is viewed by Congress. But I've seen enough to understand quite
well that it really is a case of "Follow the money" as exemplified in
the quotes above.
The case of Ellen Tauscher, my own congressperson, is instructive.
Another one of Rep. Tauscher's constituents met with her and suggested
that she hold a district hearing on the H-1B issue. She indicated that
she was well aware of "TubeGate," the video made by a prominent law firm
to teach their clients how to exploit the loopholes in H-1B and green
card law. She initially agreed to hold some kind of public forum in the
district, but subsequently kept hedging and stalling, and finally
reneged outright. According to the constituent, she also refused his
suggestion that she meet with me. What is she afraid of? Even Rep. Zoe
Lofgren, "queen of H-1B," met with the Programmers Guild, a meeting I
attended as well. Why Tauscher's reluctance?
The case for reform of H-1B and employment-based green cards is, I
submit, overwhelming, including strong findings from two
congressionally-commissioned studies, plus a number of academic studies.
The analyses show clearly that the H-1Bs are typically underpaid, that
they are hired instead of qualified U.S. citizens and permanent
residents, that the vast majority are not "the best and the brightest,"
that the abuse occurs in big mainstream firms rather than just the
"bodyshops," that the claimed "skills shortage" is phony, etc. Yet the
issue of genuine reform is shunned on the Hill.
A few in Congress have embraced the issue. Durbin, Grassley and Sanders
are notable examples in the Senate, and there are Reps. Pascrell and
DeLauro on the House side. Yet their bills attracted virtually no
cosponsors, and never made it to committee. The recent unanimous
(albeit voice vote) passage of the Sanders/Grassley amendment regarding
H-1B hiring by TARP recipients may be a harbinger of better things to
come, but this is not yet clear, and in light of history, is doubtful.
Needless to say, the H-1B critics need to become more vocal and more
organized. Programmers and engineers, as a group, tend to be reticent
people who are not comfortable with speaking out. Many fear
retribution. But clearly, campaign money is an obvious, accurate, and I
believe 90% complete explanation for Congress' actions.
But why the press?
Why hasn't the press jumped on this issue? Mind you, I'm not saying the
press has been biased. There have been a very small number of
exceptions (two mentioned below), but the vast majority have been fair.
Fair, yes, but typically superficial. Usually the reporter is on a
deadline, needs a quick quote from both sides of the issue, and will
file his/her story, never to return to the subject. It's not really
their fault, what with newspapers and magazines already being in big
financial trouble. But many of my readers wonder why what they see,
with considerable justificaiton, as an outrageous threat to the
long-term viability of the middle class, enacted and repeatedly
revalidated by our own elected leaders, has not provoked some journalist,
somewhere, somehow to convince his/her editor/publisher/broadcaster
to really get to the bottom of this issue, and expose the entire
sordid story once and for all.
Indeed, the press is hardly covering the issue at all these days. By
contrast, in 1998, they were all on the story. There was repeated
coverage on all the network evening news shows, in the New York Times,
the Washington Post and so on. Ditto for 2000. After that, though,
there has been almost nothing.
There have been a few who've stayed with the topic. Computerworld is an
obvious example, and BusinessWeek has also consistently covered it since
1998. The quality has been good in both publications, with a bit more
detail in Computerworld. The San Jose Mercury News, though running
openly biased editorials supporting an expanded H-1B program, has also
generally had good coverage. The remarkably tenacious Lou Dobbs won't
give up on the issue.
But for the rest, it's not that the quality is poor, but rather that
they are not covering the issue at all. Why not?
I normally don't initiate contact with journalists either (though I've
written op-eds), so again I must make the disclaimer that I don't have
enough information to make firm statements here. Below I will call for
the journalists on the distribution list of this e-newsletter to
give me their thoughts. Having said that, though, here are mine.
In some cases there is rank censorship. Last year, for instance, the
Washington Post ran an op-ed by Bill Gates calling for an expanded H-1B
program. When I submitted an op-ed manuscript in response (the Post had
run an op-ed of mine back in 2000), the op-ed editor made it clear that
no opposing pieces would be run, from me or anyone else (I suggested
Prof. Ron Hira). Gates' wife sits on the board of the Post.
There may be other "Mrs. Gates" cases in the print and electronic media,
as well as censoring advertisers. But in general, I think the major
obstacle is the "I-word"--immigration. The press, I believe, simply
does not want to publish anything that is critical of any aspect of
legal immigration. They have become especially interested in avoiding
offending major ethnic groups associated with immigration, which in the
case of H-1B means Indian-Americans.
The latter point is ironic, since far more Indian-Americans are being
harmed by the H-1B program than are benefitting by it, a point known
only too well by my Indian-American subscribers. Yet I believe that
this is what was at work, for instance, in the case of the 60 Minutes
piece alluded to in the e-mail message enclosed below.
60 Minutes had actually ran a critical segment on H-1B back in 1993.
But when (according to the producer) "an Indian doctor" suggested they
run a piece on the "IITs"--the Indian Institutes of Technology--a couple
of years ago, the show chose not only to run such a piece, but made sure
it would be a puff piece.
The IITs indeed deserved a 60 Minutes episode. They are excellent
institutions, a real Indian success story. I have several excellent
faculty colleagues who are IIT alumni, and we've had a number of
high-quality graduate students from the school. However, to present the
IITs as some sort of uberschool, with uberprofessors teaching
uberstudents, is just plain wrong. The IIT curriculum is pedestrian,
and most of their faculty is undistinguished in research. The students
themselves are bright, but no brighter than an A student at any of the
University of California campuses, for instance.
Fine, 60 Minutes can overdo it sometimes. But in this case the program
clearly arose as a component of the PR campaign underway at the time,
called "Brand IIT," one of whose purposes was clearly to promote
offshoring to India and raising the H-1B visa cap. In spite of viewer
complaints, 60 Minutes never ran a single letter of dissent in its
Letters segment, and on the contrary chose to re-run the show on several
occasions. One angry viewer contacted the producer, and eventually I
was brought into their e-mail conversation. It was clear from the
producer's comments that this IIT show was a sacred cow, no pun
intended, with no dissenting opinion allowed. The week before, 60
Minutes had run a segment on Stephen Hawkings, the severely disabled
physicist, and yet in spite of Hawkings' enormous courage etc., 60
Minutes had still felt it necessary to add "balance" by quoting a rival
physicist who said that Hawkings' research work wasn't that great. Yet
60 Minutes felt no need for balance in the IIT piece, even as little as
running a dissenting viewer letter.
A couple of years ago a producer for Bill Moyers contacted me on the
offshoring issue. When I said that H-1B was having at least as large an
impact on American workers as offshoring, and that also the two are
connected, the producer replied that the show would be only on
offshoring, and would not mention H-1B/L-1 at all. At first she said
that this was because "The H-1B/L-1 subject has been covered a lot
already by the press." When I said that that was true for offshoring
too, she then gave the real reason: "Immigration is too sensitive an
issue for our show."
So, I ask journalists who read this e-newsletter: What are your
thoughts on the above? Is much of the press consciously reluctant to
touch the H-1B issue? If so, is it because it deals with legal
immigration? If you reply, please let me know whether I should use your
name/affiliation, or for that matter whether I may quote you at all.
Thanks in advance.
Norm
it makes me mad, and it should make you mad, too. this is from a newsletter put out by Norm Matloff, a professor at UC Davis.
To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter
The subscribers to this e-newsletter consist of journalists, academics,
Capitol Hill staffers and of course most of all, programmers/engineers.
This posting will discuss the first and last of these categories, and
among other things will post a query to the first.
I will end below by posing questions to the journalists. I hope they
read all the way through this somewhat longish posting, but if they wish
to skip right down to the questions at the end, that's fine too.
I often receive e-mail from programmers and engineers, asking why the
issue of foreign workers (H-1B, employment-based green cards) does not
get more traction from the press and Congress. The message enclosed
below, posted here with the permission of the author (though I've
removed identifying information anyway), is typical of such queries.
The easy answer to the question is that the pro-H-1B lobbyists give lots
of money to congressional campaigns, and spend lots of money on the best
PR people, who then "educate" Congress and the press. The types of
groups lobbying include:
* the tech industry (several big organizations, and lots of lobbying
by individual firms)
* the American Immigration Lawyers Association
* academia in general
* the National Association of Foreign Student Advisers
* Indian-American political activist groups (who, like most
ethnic activists, do NOT represent the views of their putative
constituents)
Spending money on the Hill works, of course. Let me repeat the quotes I
gave a couple of days ago (and often in the past): When Congress
enacted an H-1B increase in 2000, Sen. Robert Bennett remarked, "Once
it's clear (the visa bill) is going to get through, everybody signs up
so nobody can be in the position of being accused of being against high
tech. There were, in fact, a whole lot of folks against it, but because
they are tapping the high-tech community for campaign contributions,
they don't want to admit that in public." The Republican
Congressional Campaign Committee Chair, Rep. Tom Davis, said, "This is
not a popular bill with the public. It's popular with the CEOs...This is
a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money."
I normally do not initiate contact people in Congress (though sometimes
I do so at the request of the Programmers Guild and other H-1B critic
activists). Thus I cannot claim to be an expert in all aspects of how
H-1B is viewed by Congress. But I've seen enough to understand quite
well that it really is a case of "Follow the money" as exemplified in
the quotes above.
The case of Ellen Tauscher, my own congressperson, is instructive.
Another one of Rep. Tauscher's constituents met with her and suggested
that she hold a district hearing on the H-1B issue. She indicated that
she was well aware of "TubeGate," the video made by a prominent law firm
to teach their clients how to exploit the loopholes in H-1B and green
card law. She initially agreed to hold some kind of public forum in the
district, but subsequently kept hedging and stalling, and finally
reneged outright. According to the constituent, she also refused his
suggestion that she meet with me. What is she afraid of? Even Rep. Zoe
Lofgren, "queen of H-1B," met with the Programmers Guild, a meeting I
attended as well. Why Tauscher's reluctance?
The case for reform of H-1B and employment-based green cards is, I
submit, overwhelming, including strong findings from two
congressionally-commissioned studies, plus a number of academic studies.
The analyses show clearly that the H-1Bs are typically underpaid, that
they are hired instead of qualified U.S. citizens and permanent
residents, that the vast majority are not "the best and the brightest,"
that the abuse occurs in big mainstream firms rather than just the
"bodyshops," that the claimed "skills shortage" is phony, etc. Yet the
issue of genuine reform is shunned on the Hill.
A few in Congress have embraced the issue. Durbin, Grassley and Sanders
are notable examples in the Senate, and there are Reps. Pascrell and
DeLauro on the House side. Yet their bills attracted virtually no
cosponsors, and never made it to committee. The recent unanimous
(albeit voice vote) passage of the Sanders/Grassley amendment regarding
H-1B hiring by TARP recipients may be a harbinger of better things to
come, but this is not yet clear, and in light of history, is doubtful.
Needless to say, the H-1B critics need to become more vocal and more
organized. Programmers and engineers, as a group, tend to be reticent
people who are not comfortable with speaking out. Many fear
retribution. But clearly, campaign money is an obvious, accurate, and I
believe 90% complete explanation for Congress' actions.
But why the press?
Why hasn't the press jumped on this issue? Mind you, I'm not saying the
press has been biased. There have been a very small number of
exceptions (two mentioned below), but the vast majority have been fair.
Fair, yes, but typically superficial. Usually the reporter is on a
deadline, needs a quick quote from both sides of the issue, and will
file his/her story, never to return to the subject. It's not really
their fault, what with newspapers and magazines already being in big
financial trouble. But many of my readers wonder why what they see,
with considerable justificaiton, as an outrageous threat to the
long-term viability of the middle class, enacted and repeatedly
revalidated by our own elected leaders, has not provoked some journalist,
somewhere, somehow to convince his/her editor/publisher/broadcaster
to really get to the bottom of this issue, and expose the entire
sordid story once and for all.
Indeed, the press is hardly covering the issue at all these days. By
contrast, in 1998, they were all on the story. There was repeated
coverage on all the network evening news shows, in the New York Times,
the Washington Post and so on. Ditto for 2000. After that, though,
there has been almost nothing.
There have been a few who've stayed with the topic. Computerworld is an
obvious example, and BusinessWeek has also consistently covered it since
1998. The quality has been good in both publications, with a bit more
detail in Computerworld. The San Jose Mercury News, though running
openly biased editorials supporting an expanded H-1B program, has also
generally had good coverage. The remarkably tenacious Lou Dobbs won't
give up on the issue.
But for the rest, it's not that the quality is poor, but rather that
they are not covering the issue at all. Why not?
I normally don't initiate contact with journalists either (though I've
written op-eds), so again I must make the disclaimer that I don't have
enough information to make firm statements here. Below I will call for
the journalists on the distribution list of this e-newsletter to
give me their thoughts. Having said that, though, here are mine.
In some cases there is rank censorship. Last year, for instance, the
Washington Post ran an op-ed by Bill Gates calling for an expanded H-1B
program. When I submitted an op-ed manuscript in response (the Post had
run an op-ed of mine back in 2000), the op-ed editor made it clear that
no opposing pieces would be run, from me or anyone else (I suggested
Prof. Ron Hira). Gates' wife sits on the board of the Post.
There may be other "Mrs. Gates" cases in the print and electronic media,
as well as censoring advertisers. But in general, I think the major
obstacle is the "I-word"--immigration. The press, I believe, simply
does not want to publish anything that is critical of any aspect of
legal immigration. They have become especially interested in avoiding
offending major ethnic groups associated with immigration, which in the
case of H-1B means Indian-Americans.
The latter point is ironic, since far more Indian-Americans are being
harmed by the H-1B program than are benefitting by it, a point known
only too well by my Indian-American subscribers. Yet I believe that
this is what was at work, for instance, in the case of the 60 Minutes
piece alluded to in the e-mail message enclosed below.
60 Minutes had actually ran a critical segment on H-1B back in 1993.
But when (according to the producer) "an Indian doctor" suggested they
run a piece on the "IITs"--the Indian Institutes of Technology--a couple
of years ago, the show chose not only to run such a piece, but made sure
it would be a puff piece.
The IITs indeed deserved a 60 Minutes episode. They are excellent
institutions, a real Indian success story. I have several excellent
faculty colleagues who are IIT alumni, and we've had a number of
high-quality graduate students from the school. However, to present the
IITs as some sort of uberschool, with uberprofessors teaching
uberstudents, is just plain wrong. The IIT curriculum is pedestrian,
and most of their faculty is undistinguished in research. The students
themselves are bright, but no brighter than an A student at any of the
University of California campuses, for instance.
Fine, 60 Minutes can overdo it sometimes. But in this case the program
clearly arose as a component of the PR campaign underway at the time,
called "Brand IIT," one of whose purposes was clearly to promote
offshoring to India and raising the H-1B visa cap. In spite of viewer
complaints, 60 Minutes never ran a single letter of dissent in its
Letters segment, and on the contrary chose to re-run the show on several
occasions. One angry viewer contacted the producer, and eventually I
was brought into their e-mail conversation. It was clear from the
producer's comments that this IIT show was a sacred cow, no pun
intended, with no dissenting opinion allowed. The week before, 60
Minutes had run a segment on Stephen Hawkings, the severely disabled
physicist, and yet in spite of Hawkings' enormous courage etc., 60
Minutes had still felt it necessary to add "balance" by quoting a rival
physicist who said that Hawkings' research work wasn't that great. Yet
60 Minutes felt no need for balance in the IIT piece, even as little as
running a dissenting viewer letter.
A couple of years ago a producer for Bill Moyers contacted me on the
offshoring issue. When I said that H-1B was having at least as large an
impact on American workers as offshoring, and that also the two are
connected, the producer replied that the show would be only on
offshoring, and would not mention H-1B/L-1 at all. At first she said
that this was because "The H-1B/L-1 subject has been covered a lot
already by the press." When I said that that was true for offshoring
too, she then gave the real reason: "Immigration is too sensitive an
issue for our show."
So, I ask journalists who read this e-newsletter: What are your
thoughts on the above? Is much of the press consciously reluctant to
touch the H-1B issue? If so, is it because it deals with legal
immigration? If you reply, please let me know whether I should use your
name/affiliation, or for that matter whether I may quote you at all.
Thanks in advance.
Norm