Thousands Prefer Alien Workers to Americans

By Bryan Griffith, David North – November 2016

The H-1B program allows employers to bring skilled workers (usually with college degrees) to the United States on nonimmigrant visas. The three-year visas can be renewed for another three years, and the visas can be kept alive, virtually forever, if the employer has applied for a permanent immigrant visa for the worker in question. There are some minimal and ineffective labor market protections for these workers. Under all circumstances they can bring their spouses and children (under H-4 visas) with them to the United States – and under some circumstances these aliens can work legally; there are no wage protections for the H-4s.

On the first map, there are over 2,000 employers identified who, actively and publicly, prefer alien workers for at least some jobs to U.S. ones. The formal name for this group of employers sounds like it comes from the field of abnormal psychology: they are “H-1B dependent.” This is the definition of the term: an employer with 25 full-time workers or fewer, with eight or more of them H-1Bs; with 26-50 workers, there are 13 or more H-1Bs; and with 51 or more there are 15 percent or more H-1Bs. Most users of the H-1B visa, in general, are not H-1B dependent.

Map 1: H-1B Dependent Employers
Map Updated on 11/2/2016

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The “H-1B Dependent” employers are shown in the map above; a tap on the icon presents their names, addresses, and phone numbers, all as drawn from the records of the U.S. Department of Labor. We have provided the phone numbers from the federal records so that local media can call the employers and ask them about their, by definition, unusual hiring practices.

It should be noted that the information behind the icons has been supplied by the employers and neither DOL nor CIS has proofread every entry, so there are errors. For example, the one icon in West Virginia belongs to the Harrison County Board of Education; yes, the county sought H-1B teachers, but did not have enough to warrant the H-1B dependent status. Either someone in the school system checked the wrong box on one of the five applications filed for such workers or the DOL made the erroneous data entry.

Under U.S. law an employer gets into trouble, appropriately, for discriminating against African-Americans in favor of whites, or Gentiles in preference to Jews, but it is perfectly okay under the law for the same employer to hire alien workers (through the H-1B program) in preference to resident ones. And if the employer decides that what he really wants, as some do, are twenty-some-odd males from one nation in Asia, that’s okay. Many employers are attracted to these workers because they can be paid at below-market wages, and they are docile and less likely to seek better jobs than their American peers.

The second map shows H-1B employers who are classed as debarred or willful violators. They have, at some point in the past, violated the H-1B rules and have been denied the use of H-1B workers for a period of time. As we pointed out in a report about two years ago the Department is, unfortunately, extremely reluctant to put erring employers in either category.

Map 2: Debarred and Willful Violator H-1B Employers
Map Updated on 11/2/2016

Debarred
Willful Violator

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This article is republished with permission from our friends at the Center for Immigration Studies.