H-1B Visa Architect: Program ‘Hijacked’ to ‘Displace Americans’

Former Rep. Bruce Morrison (D-Conn.) said the 1990 H-1B visa program he helped craft has been “hijacked” to routinely replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. He made his comments during a special that aired Sunday on CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”

CBS Evening News journalist Bill Whitaker explored the controversy surrounding the H-1B visa program that allows American corporations to hire foreign workers. Morrison insisted the bill he helped create was intended to help companies fill scientific jobs with difficult-to-find qualified candidates. He accused companies of shamelessly outsourcing thousands of jobs to younger, cheaper and temporary foreign workers through a loophole that allows companies to hire the foreign workers for jobs paying over $60,000...

“This is not about skills. It is about costs,” Morrison said. “The workers being brought in don’t know anything more than the workers they are replacing. They know less, and that’s why they have to be retrained or trained by the American workers who are being laid off.”

Robert Harrison, a former senior telecom engineer at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, had been called into a meeting in October 2016 along with 80 other employees to learn that their company was outsourcing them for Indian workers. Harrison was told he could stay on the job for four months, receive his salary and even earn a bonus if he trained his foreign replacement...

“When you tell someone their real reason for getting rid of these jobs is for cheap, foreign labor, that should offend everyone,” Blackwell said. “And they are told by their company, ‘If you don’t train this person in a way that we approve of them being trained, then you don’t get your severance.'”...

"Never in my life did I imagine until this happened at Disney, that I could be sitting at my desk and somebody would be flown in from another country, sit at my same desk and chair, and take over what I was doing," former Disney employee Leo Perrero said. "It was the most humiliating and demoralizing thing that I’ve ever gone through in my life."...

Related

On September 25, 2016, the Social Contract held its 40^th Writers' Workshop conference in Washington, DC. Below are links to videos of the presenters.

• H-1b Visa Use and Abuse - Miano. John Miano, with the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), discusses H-1b Visa Use and Abuse and how the H-1b system is being used to outsource and displace American workers. The ultimate objective is to offshore and export American jobs overseas.
   
• H-1b Visa Use and Abuse - Moore. Dena Moore, ex-Disney worker, discusses H-1b Visa Use and Abuse and how the H-1b system is being used to outsource and displace American workers. The ultimate objective is to offshore and export American jobs overseas.
   
• H-1b Visa Use and Abuse - Blackwell. Sara Blackwell, Protect US Workers, discusses H-1b Visa Use and Abuse and how the H-1b system is being used to outsource and displace American workers. The ultimate objective is to offshore and export American jobs overseas.