CIO, Remember We’re In Business
The H1-B visa can be a political hot button, with some people saying there are too many issued and decrying the jobs lost to foreigners. Others who have difficulty finding employees with technical skills join the annual calls to raise the cap. All against a background of the chorus that worries we’re not doing enough to grow the needed skills locally. The chorus has a point – but that’s a matter of public policy, not something most businesses should be actively concerned with. The distinction between what governments should do and the appropriate activities for a profit-seeking business sometimes get confused.
(Let me insert a parentheses to qualify my use of “most businesses”, which I will do by way of a shout out to one of my Columbia professors, Dr. Art Langer. His Workforce Opportunity Services has built a business around providing technical skills to those who would otherwise have difficulty coming by them, and getting those people permanent, secure employment. This exception only proves the rule, firstly because it’s a rare business model that can be built so deliberately around the provision of a social good, and secondly because it is a not-for-profit.)
I’m a TN-1 holder myself, the TN being faintly related to the H1-B in that they’re both for professionals, not students or unskilled workers. The Department of Homeland Security likes to make it clear that the TN is not a visa, rather a status under which professionals from North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) signatory countries may work in any NAFTA country; but I’m still a non-American working in the USA so perhaps not perfectly objective. On the one hand, I’d be happy to see the supply of H1-Bs throttled since the reduced supply could only increase the demand for my skills and experience. On the other hand, I’m disposed to take the view that the mobility of labor enriches both the laborer and the country in which she or he works. Free markets, you may have heard, are a good thing.
CIO magazine may not have heard this news. Their correspondent, Sharon Florentine, published a listicle with “5 shocking examples of H-1B visa program abuse“. I can’t say I was shocked, but then one rarely is when one reads an article with a headline that starts with a number and contains the word “shocking”. The cases cited generally involved companies that found skilled workers outside of the country willing to do the work more cheaply than the existing workforce. In some cases the work itself was moving offshore and the offshore employees were brought over temporarily on H1-Bs to get trained on the company’s specific systems and procedures; in others, the work remained onshore. While no doubt dismaying for the laid off personnel, there is a term for obtaining services in the most efficient manner possible: good management.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issues H1-B visas, just 85,000 per year. Last year they had nearly 175,000 hopefuls; this year over 230,000 applied, continuing the current growth trend. Maybe that seems like a lot, but according to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are over 19.5M people employed in Professional and Business Services in the USA, so H1-Bs fill less than half of one percent of these kinds of jobs. Even if everyone who applied was granted a visa, it would only be a hair over one percent. This isn’t going to significantly affect employment figures.
All governments should generally seek to foster a healthy business environment for their citizens. One of the tools by which they do this is the judicious provision of all different kinds of work visas, which are designed to promote various public policy goals. Student visas bring in new ideas from all over the world; P-1s allow foreign athletes to compete in the United States, just as P-2s permit entertainers or perform; and the H1-B helps organizations find skilled candidates for otherwise hard to fill positions. That’s public policy: good governments craft laws and regulations to strengthen society; in the private sector, business managers use all legal means to make their organizations effective, efficient and profitable. They’re two very different aims.
It’s common for people to get these two actors and goals confused. No one should be “shocked” when a business uses available tools for their own objectives and not to promote public policy. Certainly there are sometimes unintended consequences to a government initiative. Regulations released into the wild have complex effects. But it’s not up to executives to interpret the government’s intention behind the rule; they can only figure out how best to work within it in the interests of their firm. If one doesn’t feel that the application of a law is having a good effect, the proper response is to lobby for a change to that law, its implementation or enforcement, not to pillory the businesses who are acting within the law and in good faith. Don’t try to shame managers who are doing their jobs responsibly; but feel free to take the matter up with the politicians who may not be.
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