Make America Great Again: Immigration

My grandfather left Russia to escape religious persecution. My ancestors have, literally, been kicked out of every decent nation in Europe. He landed on American shores and was refused entry. Eventually he was taken in by Canada, but legally emigrated to the United States several years later. He started a business, saved as much as he could, and spent his savings bringing over the extended family he left behind.

Decades after his journey, I met several of the people that his efforts and sacrifice directly affected. He was much beloved by all, so much so that I cannot tell the truth from the myth when it comes to this man that I have never actually met. I do know that the escape from Russia in the dead of winter had a prolonged effect on the man’s health, and unfortunately, he died at the relatively young age of fifty-six.

My uncle was raised in a house where English was not spoken and showed up to kindergarten, in a public school, confused and lost. Eventually, the family my grandfather formed on American shores assimilated as my father, nine years later, was raised speaking English and is not at all fluent in Yiddish. My grandfather worked at the only craft he knew (stereotype/irony alert), making bagels. He socialized amongst other exiled European Jews, talking in Yiddish, and visited the schvitzes (traditional Russian bath houses). My father left the family business and integrated more into the society around him. Eventually moving to Arizona far away from the large Jewish population he knew in New York. We rarely went to temple and I barely knew any other Jews.

While my father had a foot in each culture, I consider myself 100% American. I married an American woman and am raising American kids. I know that my last name was once Zlotnickov, which sounds far more Russian than the bastardized name of Zlotnick I now carry. When my future wife asked if I would change my name back to Zlotnickov my immediate answer was no followed by hell no. I was raised an American. While my family came from Russia, we were Jews, not Russians. Russia did not want us, so fuck them.

I have been to Ellis Island where my grandfather was denied entry. I am beyond proud to be an American and realize that the American story is shaped by several waves of immigration. Anyone who is not of Native American descent, is in fact, a descendent of immigrants as Europeans did not show up in North America until the tail end of the fifteenth century.

Somehow, our country and our messed up electoral college system selected a reality TV show host with delusions of being an actual “business person” to the highest office in the land. The current president received a “small loan” of $1M (you know, like most of us do) from his father to start his real estate business. He additionally received multiple guarantees and loans against his future inheritance (Source). Even after being born on third base and believing he hit a triple, the president has a long history of not paying contractors, being sued, and then settling for pennies on the dollar. He has been personally involved in 3,500 lawsuits (Source). His one sole publicly traded company ended in disaster; but not until it was ruined from the inside by payments of over $64M to Trump in salary and bonus, incredible conflicts of interests with his other businesses, and costing stock and bond holders $1.5 BILLION in the process (Source).

This charlatan and colossal narcissist ran and won on the slogan of “Make America Great Again”. Implying that it once was, but no longer is, great. A key component of what makes America no longer great, according to Trump and his ilk, is the murderers/rapists invading our Southern borders from Mexico and the influx of terrorists from the Middle East ready to attack Americans on our own soil.

Wasting no time, in his first week, Trump issued multiple executive orders. Amongst these orders were a ban on immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries and the process to begin building “The Wall” physically fencing off Mexico from the United States. Thus, Trump could say that he made good on his campaign promises and that he was “tough on immigration”.

This grandson of a Russian immigrant, only the second generation to be born on American soil, and a staunch believer of the American dream was thoroughly sickened and appalled. Green card holders and permanent residents were denied entry into this country with the president’s signature on a piece of paper. As citizens protested at airports en mass, the president tried to conjure up images of 9/11. Except that happened almost sixteen years ago and was completely irrelevant to the present day executive order.

As much as I sincerely believe the true purpose of the executive order was to stoke the flames of racial tension and create a perception that we are an imminent danger of a terrorist attack, there is a second component to the president’s tough on immigration act. The president has promised to reform the H1B visa program. As much as I despise the man, as much as I support immigration, and as much as our nation’s history of immigration has personally benefited me and my extended family; I hate to admit this, but he has a point.

WHAT IS THE H1B?

The H1B visa was is not about immigration, the permanent move by someone of a different nationality to a new country, but it does temporarily allow an alien to legally reside in the United States and work for a sponsoring company for a period of three to six years. The program was established with the Immigration Act of 1990. It provides a certain number of Visas to foreign nationals that is currently capped at 65,000 per year with a special provision for an additional 20,000 visas to applicants that have advanced degrees. Since the number of visas that are granted are capped, they are handed out via a lottery system.

Here are some key things to keep in mind…

• The H1B visa holder may only work for the company that sponsored them
• If they decide they no longer like their job, they cannot switch jobs unless another company initiates a visa transfer
• While a visa transfer is, technically possible, it is rare in practice
• Therefore, H1Bs typically may only work for the company that sponsored them
• The vast majority of H1Bs are employed in technology
• In 2014, the mean salary of an H1B employee in software development was 25% less than the average income for software developers (Source)
• While the H1B program is supposedly in place to make up for a “skills shortage” amongst the US labor pool, 56% of the visas go to the lowest skill level (Level I) individuals
• The top 10 employers of H1B visa holders are offshore “body shops” such as Cognizant, Infosys, and Tata Consulting (Source)
• These offshoring companies flood the visa applicant pool. Their entire business model depends on grabbing up as many visas as possible and then selling bodies to US companies at cut rate prices.
• The program is rife with abuse including, but not limited to, resumes being radically embellished and/or swapping people from the person who interviewed offshore to the person who actually shows up at a client site (Source)

Most H1B’s are employed in the technology sector which accounts for 6.7 million jobs (Source). At any time, there can be well over 1 million H1B’s in the United States. For argument’s sake, let’s say 1 million are employed in tech. That means that roughly 15% of jobs in the tech sector are going to a group of people that has no leverage because they cannot quit their job and they are forced to accept 25% less than someone without the same restrictions.

While tech titans from Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg insistently bleat about the need for more H1B’s, we need to acknowledge the program for what it is - a form of indentured servitude that lowers the cost of labor by bypassing the market driven wages created by supply and demand. If this seems to dwell into tin-foil hat conspiracy theory territory, keep in mind that five top tech companies in Silicon Valley recently were ordered to pay $415M to their employees as they conspired to prevent their employees from leaving their respective firms to go to competitors at higher salaries. The ringleader of this scheme was none other than Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (Source).

Tech companies are not desperate to raise the quotas because they cannot find employees qualified for the jobs they have open. They want the quotas raised because they cannot find employees qualified for the jobs they have open at the rates they are willing to pay. An almost brazen example of this was shown in 2015 when Disney laid off over two hundred tech employees, you know - the employees tech companies absolutely cannot find? Well, before laying off their employees, they had them train their replacements. Their replacements were contractors provided by Cognizant, one of the top ten abusers of the H1B visa in the United States. Of the over two hundred laid off employees, many with excellent job reviews and years of great service, only two were hired back by Disney. In one fell swoop, Disney managed to radically cut costs and lock in their labor pool as they no longer run the risk of having good employees quit (because they can’t), completely breaking the equilibrium that should exist between employees and employers, and lowering their operating costs (Source).

THE LIFE OF AN H1B

“You just slip out the back, Jack

Make a new plan, Stan

You don't need to be coy, Roy

Just get yourself free

Hop on the bus, Gus

You don't need to discuss much

Just drop off the key, Lee

And get yourself free.”

• Paul Simon

While this is anecdotal evidence, I have worked in tech for over twenty years. I have worked alongside plenty of H1Bs. On one particular project at Microsoft, I worked with many H1Bs that was located in a far flung building in Microsoft’s sprawling campus in suburban Redmond off of Willows Road. The Indian people on the project in question lived in some apartments near the building. They walked or road the bus to get around. Four guys were each crammed into a two bedroom apartment. They billed at $30 an hour which was way, way lower than my bill rate.

Seemingly out of the blue, Microsoft moved our space to a newly leased building called the Bravern near Bellevue Square. Most of us thought it was cool that we would now be in the Bravern as it put us in the heart of a hipper area in Bellevue. The Bravern was, well, way nicer. There were bars to go out to after work. There were nice restaurants nearby. While the swanky new digs in Bellevue seemed like a world away from the suburban, strip-mall feel of Redmond; in reality it was a few miles. My commute would be longer, but it would only be a matter of minutes each way.

I couldn’t help but see how dejected the Infosys folks were. I found out later that the office move of a few miles impacted their commute by an hour each way as it had radical implications on the bus routes they depended on. None of them owned a car, nor could they really afford one. While everyone else was happy because we had a nicer work space in a cooler part of town, there was a whole group unhappy with the situation and powerless to do anything about it.

Strangely, I had been in there exact same situation. I was contracting to a company and they offered a position as a salaried employee. I took a hit in compensation, but moved from hourly to a guaranteed (well, as much as a job in today’s world is guaranteed) salary. When I made the switch, I was working and living in Los Angeles. Nothing really changed. A few months later, that project came to an end and I wound up travelling to Sacramento for a new client.

I had travelled for work before and that usually meant a decent hotel and a rental car. This company was so phenomenally cheap and trying to hang on to every nickel that they rented a property known not affectionately as “the happy house”. I was stuck living and sharing a bathroom with my co-workers.  Awkward. Everyone else in the “happy house” was a Malaysian H1B.

Since the company hired from Malaysia, there were some cultural differences. Most Malaysians are Muslim - which is fine. Most Muslims do not consume alcohol and follow Kosher rules - again, this is fine. However, I am not a Muslim and I occasionally drink alcohol and do not follow Kosher rules at all. Except the “happy house” had rules prohibiting the consumption of alcohol or pork products.

So, here I was - a legal adult, forced to cohabitate with strangers, and unable to order a pepperoni pizza and have a beer to watch Monday Night Football after work hours. I did not like the work conditions at all. I expressed my disappointment in my living conditions. When I did not get the privacy that I expected on work travel, I exercised an option that my indentured co-workers did not have, I turned in my resignation.

The morale in the “happy house” was absolutely abysmal. No one wants to work all day and then go live with their co-workers. No one wants to have a fight with a co-worker about using all the hot water for the shower or argue about whose turn it is to take the trash out. These types of fights are reserved for our spouses. What made me feel truly awful for my former co-workers is that they didn’t have the choice that I did. They could not ask for better conditions or more money. They were replaceable. If they caused a problem, they could be on the receiving end of a one-way ticket back to Malaysia. As bad as things might have been here, it was preferable to returning to a third world country.

A lot of people complain about at-will employment. It can seem really cold hearted, but it works both ways. As an employee, if you do not feel like you are getting the compensation or work conditions you want, you have every right to seek employment elsewhere. This forces employers to treat employees a certain way. Granted, there are some employees the employers want to get rid of for performance, but finding decent people is hard. Most employers who are growing and healthy want to hold on to any employee who is productive. When a decent employee quits, it causes all kinds of internal problems. Therefore, it is in an employer’s own best interest to have policies in place that look after their employees. This is the reason most jobs give annual performance increases, bonuses, and offer benefits. It’s cheaper than losing someone and trying to replace them. But would a company give a performance increase to someone who couldn’t leave? I would say it would be very unlikely that they would. Without the power to quit, employers have all the power and that’s not how capitalism is supposed to function. There is an equilibrium point between both parties that ideally keeps both sides happy. If that equilibrium doesn’t exist, then abuses can and will happen.

EVERY SINGLE DAY

"Attracting entrepreneurs and human capital is critical to the tech community."

- Todd Schulte, president of fwd.us an organization started by tech titans including Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Melissa Meyers in favor of radically increasing H1B visas

It is my sincere belief that the H1B visa has nothing to do with a so-called skill shortage and everything to do with being a cost control measure. As I am now approaching an age that is considered ancient in the tech industry, there is a near constant flood of low-cost (and of dubious quality) workers willing to do my job. And yet… My life is touched in a profound way by the companies founded by immigrants every single day.

I commute to work in a Tesla. The company that makes the car was founded by Elon Musk who was born in South Africa. At work, I use Google to help find information I need to do my job. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Mr. Brin was born in Moscow and emigrated to the United States at the age of 6. These companies, founded by immigrants, are revolutionary and making significant impacts in creating jobs and changing lives of Americans. Sergey Brin did not steal jobs, he helped found a company that employees tens of thousands of workers directly. Indirectly, he has created hundreds of thousands of jobs as the income produced by each one of the Google employees was spread throughout Silicon Valley.

Elon Musk is, quite literally, trying to change the world. Tesla has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that an electric car can be fun, exciting, and safe. Independent ratings firm Consumer Reports has called it “the best car they have ever reviewed” (Source). The kind of innovation and disruption on display from Tesla would have been unlikely from traditional American car companies. I dare to say that no one has ever been passionate or excited about the Chevy Volt. As imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, now that the standard has been set, other manufacturers are trying their best to compete with Tesla. By smashing through preconceived notions of what a car is and how to make it; Tesla is leading the way in making automobiles more environmentally friendly and bringing about an end to the United States addiction to oil.

Clearly, immigrants can and do make a huge impact on present day American lives. Clearly, immigration has long been a part of the American story. Hopefully, I have not come across as anti-immigrant. I would like to be thought of anti-immigrant abuse. There has to be a better system that allows qualified people to come to the United States, be productive, participate in the American dream, and raise American families.

The current system, plain and simple, is nothing more than a distortion to the laws of supply and demand in the labor force. So how do we get the best of both? How do we encourage innovators, dreamers, and skilled workers to become Americans, contribute to our society, and help shape the next century of American living?

WHAT IF?

What if… tomorrow we made every H1B holder a green card holder? What could possibly be the harm? Every single immigrant on US soil has already been vetted. They are here legally. They pay taxes, including Social Security - for which they will never receive benefits unless they become citizens. If every H1B suddenly had a green card, the only change would be that they would no longer be indentured servants to their sponsoring company. They would be considered permanent residents and no longer fear deportation for making their corporate overlords unhappy. They could change jobs, demand higher pay, and live better lives. The distorted supply and demand curve could be fixed that easily.

What if… Going forward, we allowed companies to hire foreigners? I am not against competition, I am against competition with indentured servants. I am against lotteries determining who the competition will be. I am against companies that have a business model of hiring lawyers and lobbyists to abuse the system. Why not let a company hire whoever they want? If the candidate that best fits the role is foreign born, we need a way to do a background check and allow them to immigrate, but with a fast path to citizenship and the freedom of a green card holder. I mean, after all, these are the supposed “best and brightest” that we are trying to bring over here, right? Let’s treat them accordingly. If a company had the ability to hire a foreign born candidate, pay their way over here, ensure a decent background check, and pay a fee (how about $50k?) to hire all the employees required for the background checking; let them. But the moment that employee shows up on US soil, they have a green card. If the job is not working out, let them negotiate with other employers. Let Adam Smith’s invisible hand of capitalism do its job.

I believe if these two changes were enacted there would be a significant improvement for people both American born and immigrants. It would bring an end to the body shop model. It would allow wages in the tech industry to stop stagnating (Source). It would give employers the flexibility to hire whoever they needed for their jobs without undercutting existing employees. Most importantly, for a country built on waves of immigration, it would be the right thing to do.