Senator Richard Durbin has sent a letter to the CEOs of 8 tech giants – Accenture, Amazon, Cisco, Deloitte, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle. He wants to pass a huge immigration reform package that also increases bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the tech giants want drastic increases in the number of H-1B guest worker visas.

Is anyone on the side of the American worker?

Senator to Tech CEOs: Support Comprehensive Immigration Reform – NBCNews.com (April 2, 2014)

From the letter:
“It was my understanding that high tech was committed to supporting S.744 [comprehensive immigration reform bill] because the industry's top priorities are addressed in our legislation. I am troubled by recent statements suggesting that some in the technology industry may shift their focus to passage of stand-alone legislation that would only resolve the industry's concerns.”

The letter calls on the tech giants to support his comprehensive immigration reform. And not to support bills that just increase the number of H-1B visas granted, like the SKILLS Act.

Senator Durbin co-authored the S.744 immigration reform bill. He claims the bill protects American jobs by requiring employers to hire American workers before a guest worker (current H1B law already requires that companies confirm they have attempted it). The bill also cracks down on use of the H-1B visa for outsourcing.

But for tech companies, the S.744 bill also means more bureaucracy, more federal costs, and more hoops for the tech giants to jump through which obviously they don’t like. More hoops mean less profit. This is why they have their FWD.US organization campaigning for more H-1Bs in the first place.

Both Senator Durbin and the members of FWD.US are missing the point. They’re not looking to solve the real problem created by offshoring skilled jobs.

FWD.US wants to ignore the skilled American workers outside their doors (who might cost a little more to hire). Senator Durbin is pushing to get his S.744 bill passed and grow the government some more.

Neither side is putting the American worker first. It’s more political wrangling vs. race-to-the-bottom employment practices.

Tune in next month for PlanetMagpie's solutions to the offshoring problem!