NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL RELEASES REPORT ON H-1B WORKERS AND US HIGH-TECH WORKFORCE

This week the National Research Council, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, which is chartered by Congress and provides information on scientific issues to Congress and the President, released its report on the impact of foreign workers on the US high-tech workforce.  The Council concluded that foreign workers are keeping the wages of Americans in technology fields from rising as high as they otherwise would.

The report, which was written by a committee of scholars, economists and representatives from businesses such as Microsoft and Intel, also concluded that foreign workers have made many positive contributions and that they have helped prevent an economic slowdown.  The report did not say how many H-1B visas would be needed to provide a sufficient number of workers without depressing wages, finding that there was no analytical basis on which to do so, and calling such a decision “fundamentally political.”

One of the areas the Council examined was the issue of age discrimination in high-tech companies.  There was evidence that workers over 40 are more likely to lose their jobs than younger workers, and are often paid less.  However, the reports states that there was insufficient information to reach a conclusion and called for more research into the issue.  Critics are calling this a stalling tactic, and say that the Council was too heavily weighted toward business interests.

The report did make some recommendations on immigration policy.  It called for a reduction in the time it takes to get a green card, and for increased portability of H-1B visas.  The Council believes that increased portability will act as a form of worker protection for both the H-1B visa holder and for US workers.  Finally, the report calls upon Congress to consider the impact of having increased the number of available H-1B visas without rectifying the green card process or evaluating the per country numerical limits on annual immigration.

This report was called for by the 1998 H-1B legislation, and was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and NASA.

The report is not available online.  However, the press release describing the results is at http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/(ByDocID)/
C54A161E8A767CD185256982006C73C3?OpenDocument.

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