Within the U.S. Senate's comprehensive immigration bill is a proposal to create a database that may shed new light on H-1B hiring.
The intent of the database is to help improve the odds that a U.S. worker may get hired over a foreign worker. But the bill's effectiveness may rise and fall on fuzzy concepts, such as "preference" and "good faith" hiring efforts, and its enforcement provisions. This is where the legislative battle may be fought.
There are a string of provisions in the Senate's bill its proponents say are intended to help U.S. workers. One is a requirement for the government to create a national database of jobs that employers want to fill with H-1B workers. U.S. workers will be able to apply for those jobs, which will be posted for 30 days. Employers are also barred "from recruiting or giving preference" to visa workers over U.S. workers.
The tech industry is concerned that the immigration bill's recruitment and database provisions may extend the amount of time needed to hire an H-1B worker and, more broadly, increase the risk of litigation and government oversight.
The final shape of the Senate's comprehensive immigration bill is now being set. The Senate Judiciary Committee is due to meet Thursday to begin considering a series of amendments to the bill. This is expected to take several days.
H-1B critics are already skeptical about the bill, which raises the base H-1B cap from 65,000 to as high as 180,000, based on a market adjustment provision.
There "is no enforcement mechanism," in the bill, said John Miano, who founded the Programmers Guild, an organization that has long had concerns about the H-1B program. He can point to history to back up his view.
Under present law, H-1B dependent employers are required to make a "good faith" effort to hire U.S. workers. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a good faith hiring effort is one where U.S. workers "must be given fair consideration for jobs."
An "H-1B dependent" company is one that has 50 or more employees, of which 15% or more are on H-1B visas. But H-1B dependent employers, which include large offshore outsourcing firms, hire thousands of visa workers, despite the "good faith" provisions.
There are loopholes for getting around the good faith requirement. For example, employers are exempt from the provision if they hire H-1B workers to fill jobs that pay more than $60,000 a year, or if they hire visa holders who have earned master's degrees.
"The new recruitment provisions are completely meaningless," said Miano.
Daniel Costa, an immigration policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, says the immigration bill only requires employers that aren't dependent on H-1B visa use to "recruit" by using the proposed Labor Department database. A good faith effort isn't required.
Top H-1B visa approvals Q1-Q2 FY2013 Organization Approvals Cognizant 7106 Infosys 6717 Wipro 3925 Tata 3119 Microsoft 1919 HCL 1446 Larsen & Toubro 1355 Mahindra Group 1198 iGATE 1014 IBM 1010 Oracle 801 Accenture 779 Deloitte 739 Syntel 666 Qualcomm 647 Cisco 587 Mphasis 568 CapGemini 558 UST Global 542 Intel 538 Amazon 473 JP Morgan Chase 412 Ernst & Young 396 Google 367 Bank of America 336 PriceWaterhouse Coopers 322 Polaris 296 NTT Data 290 Hexaware Technologies Inc. 278 Goldman Sachs 261 EMC 251 KPMG 241 Apple 240 Bloomberg LP 231 CVS Pharmacy 219 Kforce Inc. 218 Barclays 212 eBay 203 Approvals for new H-1B visas from Oct. 2012 through March 2013. Source: Computerworld analysis of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service data. Some company divisions were combined, such as IBM Corp. and IBM India, and Tata consulting and engineering groups, etc.
"I think it's crazy not to require that all employers do good faith recruiting," said Costa. "If the tech companies are truly recruiting U.S. workers like crazy as they say they are -- then why do they object to proving that they're already doing what they say they're doing?"
In an amendment filed Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is seeking "good faith" recruiting for all employers.
Costa believes the government's hiring database will improve prospects for U.S. workers, "because they can at least see where the jobs are."
But Costa also cites the enforcement issue as a sticking point. How will the Labor Department ensure that employers have followed the law? "Will U.S. workers be able to file lawsuits? That's not clear yet," said Costa. "It also has to be enforced in a way that doesn't dictate who an employer should hire, but that also protects U.S. workers from clear discrimination and preference for hiring an H-1B worker."
One of the purposes of the H-1B program is to enable employers to hire people quickly, and the requirement that jobs be posted for 30 days "will push up the timing of your recruitment," said Jorge Lopez, co-chair of law firm Littler Mendelson's Global Mobility and Immigration practice.
Employers applying for green cards are required to advertise for the job and interview qualified U.S. candidates under a good faith process. That green card process is also subject to an audit by the Labor Department. That's a longer process, and employers seeking to hire an H-1B worker typically want someone quickly, said Lopez.
The proposed rules in the immigration bill are "logistically creating a bottleneck in the system," said Lopez.
Susan Cohen, chairwoman of law firm Mintz Levin's immigration practice, said that the H-1B visa process "is designed to be as nimble as possible" for employers filling positions.
Both Cohen and Lopez said the employers they deal with would rather hire U.S. workers because the H-1B process is already complicated, but they turn to H-1B holders to fill certain job needs.
In a case where an H-1B worker is making a lateral move from one company to another, the process may be completed in as little as two weeks. With the 30-day posting period, such a move could take six weeks, said Cohen.
