http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2426857,00.html
January 27, 2000
Computerscape>> True worker shortage?
By Charles Babcock


There's a reason why the American software industry relentlessly beats the
drum to allow more skilled foreign workers into the country: It doesn't
want to hire the programmers already here.


Consequently, trade groups, such as the Information Technology Association
of America (www.itaa. org), lobby Congress to raise the limits on the H-1b
visa program. Last year, the program injected 115,000 foreign workers into
the U.S. economy, up from 65,000 the year before. Many H-1b holders are
highly intelligent, young employees eager to work at U.S. wages that are
high by their standards and low by their employers'.


Should Congress raise the limit again? Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat
representing Silicon Valley, has introduced House Resolution 2687 —
Bringing Resources from Academia for the Industry of our Nation Act, or
BRAIN — that would allow foreign technical students to work here after
graduation under an automatic "tech" visa. Such a move would pour thousands
of additional programmers and software engineers into the economy, although
employers would have to pay such hires at least $60,000 per year. In other
words, the bill is making sure no cheap foreign labor sneaks in to take
legitimate American worker jobs.


How good are the brains that have applied themselves to this problem? Not
good enough, says Norman Matloff, computer science professor at the
University of California at Davis. "There is no desperate shortage. The
only 'shortage' is one of cheap labor."


In fact, he interviewed hiring officers in several major software companies
and found they were receiving large numbers of applicants, but actually
interviewing only 10 percent to 12 percent and extending job offers to just
one-quarter of those. As a result, hiring rates are low — 2 percent at
Microsoft, 1 percent at Broderbund.


Companies are looking for specific skills and experience. But they also are
filtering out large numbers of applicants without interviews. Although many
with the desired skills are recent arrivals on the scene, the college
graduate still looks more attractive than someone with 15 years' experience
in COBOL systems.


The whole projection of a crisis in skills is, in part, the work of Harris
Miller, president of the ITAA and a former immigration lobbyist. His
lobbying firm signed up the National Council of Agricultural Employers as a
client, a group with an interest in increasing the amount of cheap foreign
labor available to work on farms, Matloff charges.


"If employers were desperate, they would certainly not be hiring just a
minuscule fraction of their job applicants," Matloff says.


Harris Miller acknowledges he previously headed a lobbying firm that had "a
variety of clients who advocated legal immigration. But I'm not sure why
[Matloff] brings that up."


Across the nation, computer science programs expanded enrollment by 40
percent in 1997 and another 39 percent in 1998, according to Matloff. The
problem isn't the number of programmers available but how quickly their
experience turns into a deficit.


COBOL programmers were once pronounced not retrainable in modern computer
languages. With the Y2K problem, companies couldn't find enough laid-off
COBOL programmers to call back into service.


Maybe instead of investing in lobbying congressmen, high-tech companies
should invest in retraining their Y2K troubleshooters as Web site
application designers, builders and debuggers.


Charles Babcock is Technology Editor at Inter@ctive Week. He can be reached
at cbabcock@zd.com on the Internet.