Foreign workers fill hundreds of Sacramento-area IT jobs
It's nearly 8 p.m., and inside a state office building two dozen computer experts design and troubleshoot a system that will take and process millions of unemployment claims each year.
It's a $200 million Employment Development Department project, but with the exception of two managers, everyone inside the office is from outside of the U.S. They are employed by Deloitte, a major U.S. IT company hired by the state to create and manage its Unemployment Insurance Modernization project. The mostly Indian nationals are allowed to work here under a visa program called H-1B.
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Matloff, like Peri, is seen as one of the leading national experts on H-1B visas. Congress has repeatedly called upon the expertise of both men as it wrestles with the dilemma of deciding between restricting or releasing the flow of foreign workers into the IT workforce.
Matloff has been studying the cause and effect dynamics of the visa program since the 1990s. He said big IT companies are gobbling up the visas, not because they can't find Americans to fill the positions, but the H-1B visa holders allow them to layoff expensive and experienced U.S. employees and hire younger and cheaper foreign workers.
"Hiring younger H-1Bs instead of older Americans means you save money," he said.
"It doesn't matter whether an H-1B takes the job here that you would have taken or, on the other hand, if the job is sent overseas. Either way, you as an American programmer or engineer, doesn't have that job," Matloff said, comparing the visas to the controversial practice of outsourcing American jobs to other countries.
"It's not any different than what illegal aliens have done to construction workers," said Kim Berry, the webmaster of two sites that almost exclusively address the influx of foreign workers in the U.S. IT job market. "Why hire an American to do the roofing when you can have a truckload of illegals do it for $30 per day each?"
Berry's Programmers Guild and Hire Americans First websites are filled with the comments of people who say they lost their jobs and were replaced by the holders of H-1B visas. News10 found Chris Brown at Hire Americans First. Berry and Brown said they worked side-by-side with very talented H-1B workers but, for the most part, they said their foreign counterparts were not as qualified as the U.S. employees they replaced.
It's nearly 8 p.m., and inside a state office building two dozen computer experts design and troubleshoot a system that will take and process millions of unemployment claims each year.
It's a $200 million Employment Development Department project, but with the exception of two managers, everyone inside the office is from outside of the U.S. They are employed by Deloitte, a major U.S. IT company hired by the state to create and manage its Unemployment Insurance Modernization project. The mostly Indian nationals are allowed to work here under a visa program called H-1B.
[clip]
Matloff, like Peri, is seen as one of the leading national experts on H-1B visas. Congress has repeatedly called upon the expertise of both men as it wrestles with the dilemma of deciding between restricting or releasing the flow of foreign workers into the IT workforce.
Matloff has been studying the cause and effect dynamics of the visa program since the 1990s. He said big IT companies are gobbling up the visas, not because they can't find Americans to fill the positions, but the H-1B visa holders allow them to layoff expensive and experienced U.S. employees and hire younger and cheaper foreign workers.
"Hiring younger H-1Bs instead of older Americans means you save money," he said.
"It doesn't matter whether an H-1B takes the job here that you would have taken or, on the other hand, if the job is sent overseas. Either way, you as an American programmer or engineer, doesn't have that job," Matloff said, comparing the visas to the controversial practice of outsourcing American jobs to other countries.
"It's not any different than what illegal aliens have done to construction workers," said Kim Berry, the webmaster of two sites that almost exclusively address the influx of foreign workers in the U.S. IT job market. "Why hire an American to do the roofing when you can have a truckload of illegals do it for $30 per day each?"
Berry's Programmers Guild and Hire Americans First websites are filled with the comments of people who say they lost their jobs and were replaced by the holders of H-1B visas. News10 found Chris Brown at Hire Americans First. Berry and Brown said they worked side-by-side with very talented H-1B workers but, for the most part, they said their foreign counterparts were not as qualified as the U.S. employees they replaced.