A group dedicated to cutting the number of immigrants to the United States has sued the federal government, demanding information about companies and workers using the controversial H-1B visa.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) claims that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration has refused to provide the data as required under federal access-to-information law. The lawsuit was filed by a FAIR partner organization, The Immigration Reform Law Institute.
FAIR and the IRLI are seeking records related to the top 20 H-1B employers and top 100 non-profits using H-1B workers. They want data on visa-approval rates for each firm or organization, plus workplace locations, lowest wages paid to visa holders, and the skill level of each employee.
The H-1B is intended for jobs requiring specialized skills and a bachelor’s degree or higher. The visa has become a flashpoint in the immigration debate. Critics point to alleged abuses and claim the work permit is used to take jobs from American workers, as well as causing other ills.
“While H-1B employers are required to pay foreign workers at market value, the fact is that flooding the labor market serves to drive down wages and limit opportunities for American workers,” IRLI executive director Dale Wilcox said in a statement.
Citizenship and Immigration said it does not comment on litigation. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. on April 13.
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Major tech firms have argued strenuously for expansion of the H-1B program. FWD.us, which counts among its founders Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, said this month that the annual cap of 85,000 H-1B visas “means that talented individuals who would otherwise be helping to grow our economy are kept out of our country – and that the U.S. loses out on the creation of American jobs, rising wages, and economic growth.”
Outsourcing companies that supply foreign workers to U.S. companies dominated the top 20 H-1B firms in 2017, federal data show, but a number of Silicon Valley tech giants made the list, including Google, Intel, Apple, Cisco and Facebook.
Data from Citizenship and Immigration indicate that the tech companies use the visa to obtain workers who are generally better educated and more highly paid than those brought in by outsourcing companies.
In 2017, the number of workers with master’s degrees or PhDs brought in by Google under the H-1B was nearly triple the number of those it brought in who had bachelor’s degrees, and other Silicon Valley tech companies’ H-1B visas were used for many more higher-degree holders than for workers with bachelor’s degrees, according to the federal data.
Among the outsourcing firms, the proportions were largely reversed. At Cognizant, Tata and Infosys, for example, the number of bachelor’s degree holders was more than triple the number of those with master’s degrees, the data indicate.
While the average pay for outsourcing companies’ H-1Bs in 2017 ranged from $74,000 at Tata to $86,000 at Infosys, those at the tech firms were averaging $105,000 at Intel up to $134,000 at Google and $143,000 at Apple.
FAIR includes in its mission the reduction of overall immigration numbers to the United States, along with “a greater focus on highly skilled immigrants.”
