Economics, Not Innovation, Drives H-1B Debate

Computerworld - Economics is driving the IT industry to doggedly persist in efforts to secure a big boost in H-1B visas for foreign workers this year, despite the move by a divided Congress on June 20 to table the controversial issue and seek voter input.

So far, large IT corporations have dictated the H-1B debate. The IT industry's lobbyists worked overtime to engineer a compromise between the Senate and the House to boost H-1B visas for their large corporate benefactors, whom CNN's Lou Dobbs dubs "corporate supremacists."

In the deal, the IT companies wanted the Senate to drop its support for a bracero guest-worker program for poor Mexican campesinos. In return, the House would agree to increase H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers from 65,000 to more than 115,000, with regular yearly increases baked in.

The IT corporate lobbyists -- the Semiconductor Industry Association, the Information Technology Industry Council, the Information Technology Association of America, the AEA and others -- are again twisting arms in the House, where immigration is as popular as lobbyist Jack Abramoff, in an attempt to pass the H-1B visa increase.

Maybe immigration hearings away from all the miasma raised by cash changing hands inside the Beltway would give citizens and IT workers a chance to be heard. We can hope that the H-1B issue isn't overshadowed by the debate about amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants or finessed by corporate lobbyists in smoke-filled rooms.

IT lobbyists have tried, mostly in vain, to make the ideologues in the House understand the innovation argument for H-1B visas. In a fairly traditional tactic, almost a dozen members of Congress and one senator were flown to India on an all-expenses-paid junket in 2004.

The House members were unmoved, but not the representative of the upper chamber. The lone senator on that 2004 India junket, Texas Republican John Cornyn, has joined the advocates of the H-1B visa increase and is sponsoring the so-called SKIL (Securing Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership) Act of 2006 with Sens. George Allen (R-Va.), Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Cornyn has pocketed more than $145,000 in contributions from IT corporations since 2000, including $13,818 for the Indian trip. The other sponsors have also accepted generous high-tech contributions.

The large IT corporations repeat the mantra that the U.S. needs these skilled foreign workers to innovate in order to remain competitive. That is a specious argument. Innovation by large IT corporations is usually of the incremental kind, adding new features to established products to protect profits. Remember how Microsoft innovated Netscape out of existence?