The vanishing American computer programmer

Move to increase number of foreign worker visas fails in Senate, but that has not stopped what critics call a push for cheaper labor.

By David R. Francis | Columnist

from the July 2, 2007 edition

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A popular video recently posted on the Internet's YouTube shows an immigration lawyer talking to a group of business people in May about the process of hiring foreigners for their companies.

"Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified US worker," says the attorney in the video, an immigration lawyer at Cohen & Grigsby, a firm in Pittsburgh. "In a sense, that sounds funny, but it's what we're trying to do here."

To Norm Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis, such efforts to use loopholes in immigration laws that were supposed to give Americans and legal residents first crack at high-tech and other jobs is "absolutely outrageous."

The real goal is to hire "cheap labor," charges Dr. Matloff. High-tech executives had backed a provision in the comprehensive immigration bill that failed in the Senate last Thursday to boost the number of H-1B or other temporary visas for highly educated foreign workers. Now, the focus will shift to "stand-alone" bills already before Congress that would accomplish the same goal, notes a spokesman for the Software & Information Industry Association.

Bill Gates, a Microsoft founder, has even called for unlimited H-1B visas. (The current theoretical limit is 65,000.)

Supporters of the measure say the visas are necessary to fill positions because of a shortage of Americans skilled in computer or other sciences. Matloff rejects those arguments and has been fighting to preserve computer jobs for native-born Americans and his students for years.

"There is nothing new in this video," he says. He recalls getting a document years ago in which a proponent of H-1B visas referred to the arsenal of tools companies can use to legally reject any American applicant for a job in favor of a foreign worker. But now that those tactics are on video, "everything changes," Matloff says. Viewers can see and hear with their own eyes and ears the words of this immigration lawyer and "his utter lack of scruples."

The video was lifted from the law firm's website and put on YouTube by the Programmers Guild, a nonprofit group with 1,500 members, most of them older than 40, and many of whom can't find jobs in their areas of expertise.

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