[Bret L]

Dr. Norm Matloff: Joyce Plotkin On Kennedy’s Support For The American
Tech Community
[James Fulford]

"Dr. Norm Matloff writes:

Let me first make my usual disclaimer that I am a lifelong
Democrat. I’ll add that whatever errors Ted Kennedy may have committed
in his earlier life, he did evolve into someone who had a deep,
genuine desire for social justice.

Having said that, the op-ed linked below confirms my longheld
suspicions that even Kennedy felt that the “greater good” demanded
that he cave in to the moneyed, powerful special interests on the H-1B
work visa–the tech industry lobbyists, the American Immigration
Lawyers Association, the universities and so on.

To many of us, H-1B serves as an exemplar of the loss of our
democracy. I’ve mentioned before, for instance, public statements by
Sen. Bob Bennett and Rep. Tom Davis explicitly stating that Congress
enacted expansions to the H-1B program because of industry campaign
money.

Joyce Plotkin, the author of the linked opinion piece,[Plotkin:
Kennedy championed the tech community, Mass High Tech, August 31,
2009] is certainly in a position to know about the politics of H-1B.
She served with a Massachusetts tech industry trade group for 22
years, according to one article I read, before she retired this year.
I recall being on a panel with her in 1995.

Ms. Plotkin portrays the situation as one in which Sen. Kennedy
formulated fair comprises between industry and labor on the H-1B
issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, one
AFL-CIO official told me in 2004 that Kennedy’s aides literally
laughed in her face, saying (I’m paraphrasing), “You [unions] don’t
count.” Soon afterward, this labor official was so discouraged that
she decided to seek another job.

And note that this occurred during the dot-com bust, a time when
Kennedy should have been even more concerned about the impact of H-1B
on U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Instead, Congress enacted a
20,000-visa increase to H-1B, by creating a special new category for
foreign students at U.S. universities, and even more significantly,
expanded the loopholes which enable employers to legally pay H-1Bs
below-market wages.

Over the years, Kennedy would from time to time pay lip service to
the fact that H-1B is used by employers as a vehicle for cheap labor,
etc. But he always supported H-1B expansion when it came to authoring
and voting for legislation. He played a key role in the bill expanding
H-1B in 2000, in spite of the release of a GAO report that was highly
critical of the visa, a month before the legislation was passed. And
of course he co-authored the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill in
2007 that would have been devastating to U.S. citizen and permanent
resident programmers and engineers.

Plotkin makes a big point of the retraining funds in the 1998
bill, ostensibly designed to reduce H-1B usage. But as we critics
pointed out at the time, this was a purely cosmetic action that would
not–and could not–impact H-1B usage. This was confirmed by a
Department of Commerce report a few years later, and most tellingly,
by a public admission by Sun Microsystems that the training funds were
never intended to reduce H-1B usage. Sun, of course, had been one of
the leading lobbyists pushing that 1998 bill.

Plotkin’s remarks below don’t match the blunt remarks of Bennett
and Davis I cited above–Davis said, “This is not a popular bill with
the public. It’s popular with the CEOs…This is a very important issue
for the high-tech executives who give the money”–but they give us yet
another look at the role of money politics in H-1B, very sad.

Norm"

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2009/...ech-community/