Here we go again: Outsourcers snap up H-1B visas at a record pace

The French have an elegant way to put it: Plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes. The more things change, the more they stay the same. That’s especially true when it comes to the never-ending drive by the tech industry to bring in more lower-paid foreign workers to Silicon Valley and the rest of the United States.

Last year, tech companies snapped up all 65,000 H-1B slots in five — count ’em — days. This year, all 65,000 (plus 20,000 more for holders of advanced degrees) were gone in, yes, five days, despite the marked slowing in IT hiring this year and the increased use of benefit-deprived contractors.

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In 2012, the companies that were the largest users of newly approved H-1B visas were outsourcers, notably Infosys, Tata, Cognizant, Accenture, and Wipro. This year, Tata, Cognizant, Wipro, and Accenture again led the pack, according to an analysis of government data by our colleagues at Computerworld.

So nothing much has changed. The tech industry is still lobbying hard to raise that cap, amid hyped and inaccurate reports written by credulous journalists and PR propagandists about a shortage of both skilled workers and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates.

I’m not just being snarky when I use the word “credulous.” Consider the widely held belief that a “skills shortage” is holding back the economy. As New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote last week:

Some news media reported that 92 percent of top executives said that there was, indeed, a skills gap. The basis for this claim? A telephone survey in which executives were asked “Which of the following do you feel best describes the ‘gap’ in the U.S. workforce skills gap?” followed by a list of alternatives. Given the loaded question, it’s actually amazing that 8 percent of the respondents were willing to declare that there was no gap.

Outsourcers are the biggest users of H-1B

Companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Facebook are leading advocates for raising the H-1B cap to 115,000 immediately and eventually as high as 300,000. There’s a well-funded lobbying campaign to do so, and with tacit support from the White House there’s a good chance it will happen this year.

But their arguments are undercut by the reality of who is actually using the imported labor. The two largest H-1B users are Indian-based: Infosys, with 6,298 visas, and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), with 6,258. In third place with 5,186 is Cognizant, which is based in New Jersey, but runs large offshore centers. These firms have long dominated the top H-1B list spots. Those three companies accounted for 27 percent of all the H-1B visas issued last year.

“The offshore outsourcing firms are once again getting the majority of the visas,” said Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. “The program continues to promote the offshoring of high-wage American jobs.”

Big domestic users were IBM at 1,624, Microsoft at 1,048, Qualcomm at 909, and Amazon.com at 881.

Although some companies are obviously having difficulties attracting top-flight engineering talent, particularly in Silicon Valley, there’s simply no evidence to prove that there’s really a significant shortage of skilled IT employees, much less evidence to support the claim that there’s a shortage of STEM grads. In fact, the opposite is true. What’s more, as I reported last month, companies are getting around the cap by bringing students to the United States under a separate program that specifically exempts their employers from having to pay the prevailing wage.

It’s not only tech companies that are involved in this charade. Cargill, a food and agricultural company, is outsourcing IT jobs to Tata Consulting Services, which has been one of the top five users of H-1Bs for at least three years running. The move by Cargill will affect some 900 IT jobs worldwide, including 300 in the United States, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported last week.

Cargill spokeswoman Lena Michoud said, “We have been looking at whether we should do it internally or choose a partner who could do it more efficiently and better.” Interestingly, Cargill is based in Minnesota, the home of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a sponsor of the bipartisan I-Squared Act of 2013, which would allow H-1B visa caps to rise to a maximum of 300,000 annually. Klobuchar, a generally liberal voice, seems to have forgotten about people like the IT employees at Cargill who will lose their jobs.

Maybe if we explained it in French she’d get the point.

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