The Hindu : U.S. lawmakers highlight abuse of L-visas

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 06, 2004

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International

U.S. lawmakers highlight abuse of L-visas

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, FEB. 5. Some lawmakers in the United States have called for drastic changes in the law on L-visas. Members of the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives, were hearing testimonies on these visas on Wednesday.

But those in full favour of these visas, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Information Technology of America (ITAA), are calling for caution while discussing changes to this category that enables American companies with international operations to temporarily transfer to the U.S. senior executives and managers from other countries with particular specialised knowledge.

This is one of the first specific hearings on the L-1 visas. The initiative for direct changes in this visa category will have to come from the Judiciary Committees and analysts believe that any legislation is quite some distance away. But a distinct impression was gained during the hearing that what lawmakers were looking for was to tighten the language and the loopholes, not get rid of the visa altogether.

"Today, we are focussing on outrageous and fraudulent abuse of the `L-visas' programme by corporations that are apparently using a loophole in the law to get around quotas that limit the number of high-tech workers who can be brought into the United States," the Democratic law-maker, Tom Lantos said.

"Ironically, the L-visa guest workers do not come to the U.S. to apply knowledge at all, but rather to get it. In a tawdry affair, the U.S. corporations force doomed American workers to train the L-visa guests, then fire their American workers and ship their jobs back overseas with the returning guest workers. I find this process an outrage," he said. Premier Indian Information Technology companies such as Wipro, Tata Consultancy and Infosys came in for specific mention.

"Another of the more blatant abuses of the programme is perpetrated by outsourcing companies who bring in foreign workers and then sub-contract them out to other businesses — so-called `body shops.' I doubt that Congress envisioned the likes of Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro Technologies and Infosys Technologies — all Indian-owned firms — when it created this programme 33 years ago. Some of these firms and others like them have a troubled history under the H-1B programme," said Michael Gildea, Executive Director, Department of Professional Employees of the AFL-CIO, the largest labour federation.

"Through a variety of legal and extra legal means, American companies have been systematically replacing American workers with foreign workers who are nearly always paid less than those they replace. The L-1 visa system represents the latest legal loophole that is being exploited to the detriment of American workers," said Dan Stein, Executive Director, Federation for American Immigration Reform.

"Statistical information on abuse of L-1 visa is unavailable because no government agency is paying attention to this issue. However, anecdotal evidence of abuse is increasingly available across the country," Mr. Stein said.

According to statistics provided by him, about 75,315 L-1 visas were issued in 1992, that came to 328,480 in 2001 with the number continuing to escalate in 2003 in spite of record levels of unemployment among IT workers in the U.S.

But the president of ITAA, Harris Miller, called the L-1 non-immigrant visas a "key element" of America's continued global dominance of the IT industry and argued that legislative proposals to alter or eliminate this visa category are ill-advised.

"The L-1 visa is an example of a successful programme in our complex, often criticised and politicised immigration system. There is room for administrative improvements and the ITAA supports operating the programme at the highest achievable standards," Mr. Miller told the Committee.

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