H1B visas promote employee discrimination Locke 01 [Robert, Staff Write for Front Page Magazine, January 24 2001, http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=22968]
H1-B helps promote age and other forms of discrimination by giving companies a ready supply of foreigners who don't have any uppity American ideas about their rights and who can be silenced by threatening to send them back where they came from. Because even companies that don't employ H1-B workers can threaten to do so, H1-B has a chilling effect on industry as a whole.
Neg Defense - No need for H1B
Native workers are equally qualified as H1B recipients Locke 01 [Robert, Staff Write for Front Page Magazine, January 24 2001, http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=22968]
Though the H-1b has been sold as providing companies access to the "world's best and brightest", reality differs from the sales pitch. The law states the alien must have "a bachelors degree or equivalent". Hardly indicative of the world's best and brightest. Experience shows that the people imported are, in general terms, no better or no worse than domestic workers. Nobody objects to bringing in Nobel-caliber scientists and the like, but this is a tiny number of people, not 200,000 per year.
Labor shortage do not exist—H1B visas are corporate subsidies Locke 01 [Robert, Staff Write for Front Page Magazine, January 24 2001, http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=22968]
Industry likes to tell the public that they need to bring in foreign workers because of a so-called "labor shortage." But the very concept of a labor shortage is a sophistry that has no place in free-market economics.Economics teaches that in a free market there are never shortages of anything, only things whose price, as set by supply and demand, is higher than some person wishes to pay. There is not a technical job in America that could not be filled with an American citizen if the employer were willing to pay the right price. The fact that the company in question "cannot fill" the position is merely a function of their desire to set an arbitrary price that they feel like paying. This is not the way of the market, and frankly it is a form of corporate decadence for them to go running to the government for a subsidy in the form of cheap foreign workers.
Neg Defense - H1B does not solve recessions
H1B increases in response to recessions are always too late due to lack of predictive ability. This results in heavily pent up demand for visas Migration Policy Institute 9 [Immigrants and the Current Economic Crisis: Research Evidence, Policy Challenges, and Implications 2009, www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/lmi_recessionJan09.pdf]
Pent up demand for employment-sponsored visas means that actual lower admissions in these categories are not anticipated in the immediate future. Although they are designed to respond to labor needs, employment-based admissions do not appear to respond to business cycle fluctuations. DHS admissions from the two most recent recessions are clear on this point. This trend is the result of pent up demand for employment-sponsored visas and the relatively short duration o these recessions. Whenever there are more applicants for a visa category than there are available visas, the category becomes oversubscribed and immigrant visas are issued in the chronological order in which the petitions were filed until the annual numerical limit for the category is reached. Each month the State Department publishes the filing dates of petitions currently being processed. As of December 8, 2008, the State Department was processing visas for skilled employment based visas (second and third preference) filed between October 15, 2001 and May 1 2005 depending upon the nationality of the applicant. Even if new demand for employer-sponsored visas falls, pent up demand will likely continue to drive employment based immigration in the short term
Preventing companies from hiring foreign workers through H-1B visas harms the US economy by not allowing it to adapt. Any expansion would prove to be net beneficial.
Bharat Observer 9 (Bharat Observer “Restricting H-1B visas is bad for business and the economy” May 15, 2009 Friday) TKK 'In order to grow the American economy and support the American workforce, Congress should expand and improve the H-1B visa programme,' said James Sherk and Diem Nguyen Thursday. As adding regulations to the H-1B programme would be a serious setback to US visa policy and would only end up hurting the US economy, the Congress should instead raise the cap from the current 65,000 to the 2001 quota of 195,000 visas a year, they said. Sherk is fellow in labour policy and Nguyen is a research assistant for foreign policy studies at The Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. Referring to reports that two senators, Republican Chuck Grassley and Democrat Dick Durbin plan to introduce a bill that would limit the ability of companies to hire H-1B employees, the experts said an argument that H-1B visa recipients are a threat to American workers is 'misguided.' 'Given the current economic climate, handcuffing employers from hiring talented workers will hurt-not help-the economy, further delaying the ability of businesses to restart the national economic engine,' Sherk and Nguyen said. Many believe H-1B workers merely compete with Americans looking for work, the duo said. But 'They are wrong. The US workforce is not a 'zero-sum game, " they said. 'One hired H-1B worker does not mean an American is out of a job. In fact, the National Foundation for American Policy found that employers hired four new American workers for each new H-1B employee they hire.' Additionally, hiring H-1B employees does not lower the wages of American workers. Current law requires that when employers apply for H-1B visas, they must attest that they will pay the visa recipient the same wage they would pay an American with similar skill sets. Rather than limiting the ability of employers to hire H-1B workers by adding more rules and restrictions, Congress should ensure the federal government exercises appropriate oversight in enforcing current laws, Sherk and Nguyen said. Preventing companies from hiring foreign workers harms the US economy's ability to rapidly adapt to marketplace demands, they said suggesting, 'Companies must be able to hire persons best suited to fill positions based on their skill sets-not their nationality.'Published by HT Syndication with permission from Bharat Observer.
