Slave trade

National Review, Sept 14, 1998 by Mark Krikorian

Permitting guest workers sounds like the perfect solution to the immigration imbroglio. Look again.

Mr. Krikorian is Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C.

A bill to substantially increase the number of foreign high-tech workers admitted under temporary visas has stumbled in Congress, mainly because of divisions among Republicans and a strong veto threat from the White House. The House leadership postponed until after the August recess a vote on the bill to increase the number of "H-1B" visas for computer programmers and other skilled workers by almost 200,000 over five years, from the current 65,000 a year to 115,000 by 2002. And the bill may simply fade away because, in the words of one House Republican staffer, "How many people want to vote for 190,000 new foreign workers two months before an election?"

But even if it doesn't become law this year, the implicit model of immigration it embodies will be with us for some time. Under this new dispensation, "nonimmigrants" (the technical term for those on temporary visas) are admitted for long periods of time to work for specific employers, without the ability to change the terms of employment or switch employers. Though most of today's immigrants are able to participate freely in the labor market, the number of captive foreign workers has been growing steadily. In 1981, only 44,770 temporary workers and trainees were admitted to the United States; by 1990, the number had grown to 139,587, and by 1996, 227,440. The total number of such workers present at any one time is in the hundreds of thousands (both in the visa categories mentioned above and in others), and proposals like the H-1B bill would increase that number dramatically.

The model that has governed our law for more than a hundred years treated immigrants as free workers, able to compete in the labor market. This free-worker model of immigration was formally articulated in the Contract Labor Law of 1885, which prohibited the importation of aliens under contract for the performance of labor or services of any kind. This was a reaction to the importation of "coolie" labor from China, a practice which itself succeeded the institution of indentured servitude. And it was a recognition that the freedom of workers to negotiate wages and working conditions and to change jobs is essential to capitalism -- just as indentured servitude was a manifestation of pre-capitalist labor relations, like vassalage or serfdom.

Today's emerging immigration model harks back to those pre-modern arrangements. Like their predecessors, today's captive workers come voluntarily, for the chance of earning more money or settling permanently, but they can't strike, can't switch jobs, can't even complain. Some critics compare this captive-worker model to slavery, but actually, for employers, it's much better than slavery: they don't have to make huge capital investments in purchasing workers, nor do they have to feed and clothe the guest workers, nor support them in their old age. Employers enjoy the benefits of a manorial relationship without the costs.

The bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform was unequivocal in its opposition to the captive-worker model of immigration. Commenting on farm workers, but with an eye toward all nonimmigrant worker programs, the Commission wrote that it "unanimously and strongly agrees that such a program would be a grievous mistake. . . . Experience has shown that such limitations are incompatible with the values of democratic societies worldwide."

Today's emerging captive-worker model of immigration has three components.

1. High-tech Braceros: The H-1B visa program was invented in 1990 because of congressional panic over a labor shortage which never materialized. The program allows for 65,000 temporary visas, good for up to six years, for people in "specialty occupations" tied to a specific employer. The captive nature of this labor force doesn't start with the H-1B visa. Many of the workers arrive on student visas, then extend them for one year to get "practical training" (tied to an employer). Only then do they get H-1B visas.

Getting assigned to a different employer is difficult; and since the main payoff of an H-1B visa is sponsorship by one's employer for a green card, the worker doesn't want to have to start the sponsorship process over by switching jobs, possibly dragging things out so long that the temporary visa expires first. Once the immigrant acquires a green card, he's free to work anywhere he wants, but his period of indenture is long enough for his employer to profit handsomely from the arrangement.

So it's no surprise that high-tech companies are pushing for an increase in these visas. They could instead have sought the reallocation of some family-based green cards to the employment-based categories. John O'Sullivan suggested that policy in these pages ("Silicon Implants," June 1), and business could almost certainly get Congress to approve it. But computer firms want to prevent job-hopping, and simply increasing the number of immigrant programmers won't do that.