The So Called Evils of Undocumented Workers and the Real Evil of the H1B visa program

The current congressional debate on foreign workers is discussing the wrong problem. The right is focusing on preventing, through a wall, people from crossing the Mexican border. This focus certainly appears to be racist to Latin Americans. It will do noting to stem the tide of illegal immigration from eastern Europe and other depressed areas around the world. The real solution would be setting reasonable requirements and streamlining the legal worker immigration, even temporary, process for all. The solution should include a method to grant documentation to the seasonal and manual labor force in a method similar to but more equitably written toward the workers than the H1B visa program. These workers are currently being exploited by companies, whose penalties for employing them are minimal and benefits are great in labor cost savings. When they can't be threatened with being turned over to ICE they too will ask for a living wage.

On the other hand a significant but ignored by the right is the legal workers being brought in under the H1B visa program. This statue does more harm than the Latin American undocumented workers. Do not confuse my dislike of the H1B visa program with discrimination toward any nationality. The H1B program is just as unfair to the visa holders as it is to the current american workers that are having their salaries reduce because of or by being replaced by these people. Someone on an H1B is a wage slave. If their employer terminates them or just fails to renew the sponsorship of their visa they have 30 days to find a new sponsor or they must leave the country. It leaves them unable to stand up against many forms of coercion or unfair practices. They end up working at under market rates and with minimal benefits. Their oppression depresses the market for all.

A common way that a employer exploits the H1B visa program is to post a job with a great number of detailed requirements but with an under market salary. Then they find few applicants if any for the position. Any applicants will be accepting a lower salary than their skills and experience warrant. They then are able to look outside the country for workers with the skills they want but at the lower salary they want to pay. In the most severe cases they will be less stringent on meeting the technical requirement than they were when reviewing domestic candidates thereby unfairly reducing wages for skilled workers across an industry.

Members of Congress seemed to be focused on where people come from and how things effect the corporations and not on the immigrants, their welfare, and providing them a living wage. They need to stop focusing on profits for corporations and the racial phobias of the constituents but on wages for workers skilled and unskilled, new immigrant workers and currently legal workers, from all areas of the world in all future immigration legislation.