Paul, check out this article. We need you to come out of retirement. :-)
Michael
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SIA Testifies to Congress on Workforce Issues, Supports Increase in Visas for Foreign Professionals Complete Testimony Available on SIA Web Site
April 24, 1998
WASHINGTON, April 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Semiconductor industry officials escalated efforts on Capitol Hill this week to secure passage of legislation that would enable U.S. chip companies to continue hiring the "best and brightest" foreign students, engineers and scientists -- most of whom are being educated and trained at American universities.
Votes on an immigration-reform bill, which would increase the number of six-year work visas available to specially trained foreign professionals, are expected in both the House and Senate in May. The current government cap on H1-B visas is 65,000 per year. Unless the cap is raised, the 1998 fiscal year cap will be reached by the end of May.
"If Congress does not pass legislation to raise the visa cap, our companies will be forced to turn away some of the brightest graduates of American universities," said Daryl Hatano, vice president of international trade and government affairs for the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). "Having trained these foreign students in the United States -- in many cases at taxpayer-financed universities -- it would be foolish if U.S. companies could not hire them to alleviate our current shortage of critical skills. Instead of working to make America stronger, these engineers would be forced by the U.S. government into the arms of our foreign competitors."
The legislation is controversial because some groups claim, erroneously, that lifting the visa cap would take jobs from American workers.
"They are dead wrong," said Hatano, testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims. "Highly skilled foreign engineers, whether U.S. or foreign born, actually create manufacturing, marketing and administrative jobs throughout the United States."
Hatano and representatives from U.S. universities and leading technology companies urged Congress to take immediate action to increase the 1998 allotment of H1-B visas. Foreign professionals are in high demand throughout U.S. high-tech industries and they are critical to the continued growth of American chip companies, which employ an estimated 2,000 foreign professionals through the visa program each year.
The chip industry is now America's largest manufacturing industry in terms of value added to the U.S. economy, contributing 20 percent more than the next leading industry. Rising from the 17th position in 1987, the industry's unparalleled expansion has created employment growth of 4.3 percent per year (since 1991), which is 8.6 times faster than the growth of all other manufacturing employment.
In a recent letter to congressional leaders, a group of chip industry CEOs warned lawmakers that the outcome of the visa debate would impact the competitiveness of U.S. companies.
"Be clear about what is at stake," the CEOs said. "Failure to address current and future worker shortages could mean a loss of America's high technology leadership in the world. A short-term solution is to raise the cap on the H-1B visa. The long-term solution, and one in which each of our companies is already engaged, lies in preparing more American students for the high technology workforce of the future."
Workforce-related issues are becoming so important within the industry that the SIA Board of Directors recently decided to launch a comprehensive worker development and education program to address the industry's long-term employment needs. The program will target K-12, undergraduate and post-graduate education projects as part of a broad effort to increase enrollment in math, science, engineering and technology careers.
This new program will augment existing projects managed by SEMATECH in Texas and the Semiconductor Research Consortium in North Carolina, as well as private efforts funded by individual companies in their local communities and school districts.
The first evidence of the new SIA program is the campaign to increase the arbitrary visa cap on foreign professionals.
"Overall job growth in the industry, coupled with a decline in the number of U.S. students majoring in engineering and computer science, has led to an increasing need for skilled foreign professionals," Hatano testified.
U.S. chip companies employ 260,000 people nationwide and have direct employment in 35 states. The industry has added 40,000 jobs since 1992. As the industry has grown, critical shortages have surfaced for highly specialized engineers and scientists.
Non-U.S. citizens are prime candidates for some of these jobs because they now represent one-third of all Master of Science and one-half of all Ph.D. electrical engineering degrees granted by U.S. universities. To hire these scientists, U.S. companies must apply for the H-1B visa, pay the workers prevailing wages, and post the salaries of H-1B workers in public places available to other employees.
"There is no low-cost labor in the chip industry," Hatano said. "Competition is fierce. The unemployment rate for electrical engineers is less than half of 1 percent. The average wage in the semiconductor industry is approximately $55,000, nearly twice the average of private industry overall. "
U.S. semiconductor manufacturers lost their worldwide leadership in market share to the Japanese in the mid-1980s. But today, U.S. companies have reasserted their leadership and gained more than 50 percent of the world market.
"America's leadership position is based on the ingenuity of its workers, " Hatano said. "To remain competitive, our companies must be able to hire the best and brightest people who will enable us to develop more powerful products at lower costs.
"Foreign engineers graduating from American universities will have a major role in the future of the world semiconductor industry. The only question is, will these foreign engineers apply their skills working in American companies, filing for American patents, and supporting jobs at American factories; or will the cap on H-1B visas force these foreign engineers to compete against American
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