The H-1B visa: Do the math

YOUR JULY 7 editorial "On immigration, a few easy calls" missed by a long shot -- unless you mean that more H-1B workers will help business to keep tech salaries flat. Your point that the United States isn't producing enough engineers and scientists to meet business's needs is just wrong. The US Department of Labor estimates that over the next eight years, computer and mathematical science occupations will add 967,000 jobs -- a mere 120,000 or so jobs a year. At the same time, the Department of Education reports that US colleges and universities are graduating more than 300,000 students a year with bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degrees in computer/information science, math, and engineering. At current rates, the supply of graduates will exceed the Labor Department's projections.

As for any concerns about missing the opportunity to retain foreign graduates with advanced degrees, current H-1B law includes two exemptions above the annual base figure of 65,000 foreign workers. One of these allows educational institutions, nonprofits, and other entities a total of 27,500 foreign workers, and the other allows 20,000 foreign workers with advanced degrees from American institutions to find work in the United States. Both exemptions permit these workers to remain for six years.

PAUL E. ALMEIDA
Washington

The writer is president of the Department for Professional Employees at the AFL-CIO.

SINCE ITS inception in the 1990s, the H-1B visa program has placed as many as 195,000 foreign-educated workers a year, for up to six years, into the US labor pool. Big business would love to increase the current 65,000 yearly quota. They want access to a huge labor pool so that they do not have to pay a higher wage rate to US citizens and green card holders.

By 2000 the visa program started to affect computer professionals like myself. This visa target group will now affect workers in the healthcare industry such as nurses, pharmacists, and technicians. The H-1B visa program, then and now, is all about cheaper labor.

TOM GRANDEL
Plymouth