SAN JOSE >> A Southern California congressman has introduced a bill to revamp the H-1B visa for high-skilled foreign workers, but a Bay Area congresswoman warned on Thursday Silicon Valley’s job market could be undermined by the measure.
Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from San Diego County, hopes his bill will reduce outsourcing of jobs based in the United States and the replacement of American employees by foreign workers.
Issa also hopes the bill will help the United States retain the most skilled workers.
The legislation, H.R. 170, is designed to close a loophole in the immigration system for high-skilled workers to bring in cheap foreign labor from abroad.
Issa’s bill would raise the salary requirement for the positions to $100,000 a year, up from the current $60,000 annual wage. By raising the salary minimum to be more in line with average U.S. wages for these kinds of jobs, the legislation, Issa believes, would reduce the chances that American workers lose their jobs to cheaper foreign labor.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Santa Clara County Democrat, warned that the Issa bill is unlikely to remedy the issue of outsourcing of Bay Area high-skilled and tech jobs.
That’s because tech companies in a location such as Silicon Valley, where fledgling software engineers can command a starting wage of $140,000 a year, might still have incentives to outsource their work to cheaper labor they could bring in for $100,000, Logfren said.
“Raising the wage from $60,000 to $100,000 would do nothing to prevent the sort of outsourcing abuse we’ve seen under the H-1B visa program,” Rep. Lofgren said Thursday.
The Issa legislation might intensify the problem, the congresswoman opined.
“It could worsen outsourcing, particularly for high-income areas like Silicon Valley where outsourcing would be concentrated under this legislation,” Lofgren said.
It’s expected that the Lofgren bill would would prioritize allocation of H-1B visas and jettison the current lottery system that’s based on the $60,000 pay level for high skilled jobs. Lofgren said she expects to introduce her bill in a few weeks.
“Preference would go first to employers that hire mainly U.S. workers and then to H-1B-dependent employers,” according to a summary of Lofgren’s approach that was released in June. Lofgren has been working on a bill for more than a year.
Employers who pay 150 percent to 200 percent — or put another way, as much as 2.5 times to three times — the prevailing wage in their metro area would get first preference to hire people through the H-1B visa program, under the Lofgren legislation.
“My bill refocuses the H-1B program to its original intent, to seek out and find the best and brightest from around the world,” Lofgren said. The legislation, she added, would “supplement the U.S. workforce with talented, highly-paid, highly-skilled workers who help create jobs here in America, not replace them.”
Issa is concerned about manipulation of the existing H-1B visa system by companies such as entertainment firm Walt Disney and utility company Southern California Edison.
“We need to make sure programs are not abused to allow companies to outsource and hire cheap foreign labor from abroad to replace American workers,” Issa said. He added that his legislation “will ensure that our valuable high-skilled immigration spots are used by companies when the positions cannot be filled by the existing workforce.”
One of the over-arching policy goals of President-elect Donald Trump is to bolster hiring of American citizens and reduce the instances of U.S.-based jobs being outsourced to foreign countries or foreign workers.
“This bill is simple, bipartisan and is an important step to growing our economy and fixing one of the many aspects of our country’s broken immigration system,” Issa said.
