The H-1B Program Wins the Triple Crown for Discrimination

By David North on May 29, 2014

California Chrome may or may not win the Triple Crown next month, but that steady, reliable old immigration war horse, the all-too-powerful H-1B program, remains a trifecta winner in the field of discrimination.

You see, the program routinely discriminates against:

  • American workers;
  • Older workers, i.e., those aged over 35; and
  • Women.

Clearly no American workers get jobs through the H-1B program; it is, by definition, reserved for aliens and leads to wide-spread displacement of citizen workers.

On the second point, Professor Norman Matloff of UC-Davis, dean of the H-1B watchers, has shown for years that H-1B employers routinely pick young (largely Indian) college grads, or master's degree holders, rather than experienced (35-plus) American high-tech workers. (See, for instance, his piece starting on p. 5 here.)

The third leg of H-1B discrimination is often ignored, partially because there are no published figures on the gender breakdown of the H-1Bs, but the extent of the apparent anti-female discrimination was stated forcefully by Karen Panetta, a vice president of professional association IEEE-USA (the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), when she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this spring. Dr. Panetta is also a professor of engineering and the Director of the Stimulation Research Laboratory at Tufts University.

As she said in her testimony on March 18:

My own experience tells me that the vast majority of H-1B workers are men. Everybody knows this. The IEEE-USA represents more American high tech workers than anybody else, so we have sources. One from inside the industry, looking at the off-shoring companies that dominate the H-1B program, is that their global hiring is 70 percent men. But in the United States, where outsourcing companies get more than half the capped H-1B visas, the ratio is more like 85 percent men. That's outrageous. (Emphasis in original.)

She went on to criticize the government for not routinely publishing the numbers of men and women in H-1B slots, and for it to insist, as it did, that she file an FOIA request to secure those numbers. The request has not yet been acted upon. I hope Dr. Panetta publicizes the response — when, and if, she gets it.

There are two ways that the H-1B program reduces job opportunities for women. The first is that all hires of H-1B workers from overseas limit job opportunities for resident workers of both sexes. The second is that selections within the H-1B program — made by males, often Indian males — tend to be disproportionately of other males, despite the fact that the number of women attending Indian high-tech training institutions is steadily rising.

It would be helpful if all women in Congress became aware of this glaring flaw in the H-1B program, and voted against its expansion, or better yet, for its abolition.