Is the tech industry hurting American workers?

President Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and a group of U.S. governors and mayors are among those who have repeatedly said the U.S. is facing a shortage of workers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, but researchers at Georgetown University, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the Center for Economic and Policy Research are some of many who have studied the issue and say the numbers don’t reflect a skills gap.  A recent report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a DC-based think tank, found that in 2012 the U.S. had “twice as many people (immigrant and native) with STEM degrees as there were STEM jobs.”

Robert Hoffman, a tech industry lobbyist, says the CIS report uses “misguided and misleading” statistics on the STEM economy and undercounts by millions the number of jobs that need some form of STEM knowledge or education. “It wouldn’t count the CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer… or engineering professors at Howard University.”  Hoffman claims that there are actually hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. that are going unfilled because companies can’t find American workers with the appropriate skills. “If you go to glassdoor.com, you will find 775,000 IT and engineering job openings in this economy.”

Ron Hira, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute and co-author of “Outsourcing America,” says these claims by Hoffman and the tech companies he represents are profit driven. “Their business model is not only not to hire Americans but to replace Americans with these cheaper guest workers.”

H-1B visa

At the heart of the debate is the H-1B visa, which was designed 25 years ago to allow American businesses to hire temporary foreign workers with "highly specialized knowledge" when they "cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce."  85,000 of such visas are issued annually, but tech companies say more are needed to make up for the lack of American workers with proper STEM training.  Hira says, “We know they're not filling skills gaps because they're forcing the American workers who have the higher skills to train their foreign replacements.”

He is referring to two recent high profile cases at Disney and Southern California Edison that brought the guest worker issue to the forefront. More than 500 workers were laid off at the companies and many of their positions were filled by immigrants with temporary work visas such as the H-1B.  The American workers say that as a condition of their severance package, they had to train their foreign replacements as well as sign non-disparagement agreements with their former employers.

Hoffman argues, “The whole purpose of IT to the Disneys, to the Southern California Edisons, is to look for efficiencies” and it’s unrealistic to expect them to “throw up their hands and say, “You know what ? You’re right. We shouldn’t try to achieve efficiencies in IT.”  Hira says the issue is not that companies are looking for ways to cut costs, but that they’re misusing a federal visa program designed to bring in professionals with specialized skills, to fill ordinary IT positions with cheaper non-American workers. “These are entry level jobs.  83% of the H-1B applications are for wages that are 20% or 40% less than the average wage.”  

Tune in for the debate

Sunday on Third Rail, we ask: Is the tech industry hurting American workers? Robert Hoffman, Ron Hira and Bjorn Billhardt, a German-born immigrant who co-founded a tech company in Austin, TX that employs about 30 Americans, debate. Tune in at 6PM ET/3PM PT on Al Jazeera America.    

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