THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

I am pleased that the House of Representatives has moved quickly to pass a bipartisan compromise to address a shortage of skilled workers, while providing new training and protections for U.S. workers. To address that shortage and maintain America's competitive edge, we must give U.S. workers new opportunities to train and to learn new skills. This legislation helps us meet that challenge by providing up to $250 million over 3 years in new funding to educate and train Americans for the jobs of the future.

This compromise institutes new reforms to ensure that employers do not replace U.S. workers with temporary foreign workers and requires employers to recruit U.S. workers. In short, it contains new investments in training, tougher enforcement, and new protections for U.S. workers. I look forward to Congress sending me a bill that is consistent with our bipartisan agreement.

SEPTEMBER 24, 1998

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support H.R. 3736.

First, some background: the H-1B bills passed by the Senate and by the House Judiciary Committee both proposed to increase the quota of H-1B temporary visas for foreign professional workers. Both bills responded to the fact that demand has exceeded the annual quota of 65,000 in each of the past two fiscal years. The reason for this increased demand is thought to be a shortage in America’s information technology workforce. While evidence for this shortage is inconclusive, I believe that we should give the industry the benefit of the doubt and grant the additional visas.

The Senate and House Judiciary Committee bills did have stark differences. The Judiciary Committee bill required that employers comply with two new attestations when petitioning for H-1B workers. Employers would have had to promise not to lay off American workers and replace them with H-1Bs and to recruit American workers before petitioning for foreign workers. I felt that these protections for American workers were necessary because of the large number of documented abuses of the H-1B program, instances of companies actually laying off Americans to be replaced by H-1Bs and companies recruiting workers exclusively from overseas. The Senate bill contained no comparable protections.

With the assistance and support of the House Leadership, we wrote a workable compromise between the two bills. And, in negotiations concluded just yesterday, we made further changes we hope will gain the support of President Clinton. The measure we are considering today embodies these compromises. Of course, it is a negotiated agreement. That is the nature of any legislative process. What is important is that we have come up with a bill that both responds to the needs of American industry and adds protections for American workers.

The employers most prone to abusing the H-1B program are called job contractors or job shops. Often much of their workforce is composed of foreign workers on H-1B visas. These companies make no pretense of looking for American workers. They are in business to contract their H-1Bs out to other companies. The companies to which the H-1Bs are contracted benefit by paying wages to the foreign workers often well below what comparable Americans would receive. Also, they don’t have to shoulder the obligations of being the legally recognized employers -- the job shops remain the official employers.

Under the compromise we are considering today, the no-lay off and recruitment attestations will apply to H-1B-dependent businesses in those instances where they petition for H-1Bs without masters degrees in high technology fields and where they plan to pay the H-1Bs less than $60,000 a year. The attestations are being targeted to hit the companies most likely to abuse the system. Other employers, who use a relatively small number of H-1Bs, will not be affected unless they have been found to have willfully violated the rules of the H-1B program.

Specifically, the no-lay off attestation prohibits an employer from laying off an American worker from a job that is essentially the equivalent of the job for which an H-1B worker is sought during the period beginning 90 days before and ending 90 days after the date the employer files a visa petition for the alien.

The recruitment attestation requires an employer to have taken good faith steps to recruit American workers (using industry-wide recruitment standards) for the job an H-1B alien will perform and offer the job to an American worker who applies and is equally or better qualified than the alien.

Other features of the compromise are that the H-1B quota will be set at 115,000 in 1999 and 2000 and 107,500 in 2001. Then the quota will return to 65,000 (at which time the attestations will sunset).

The Labor Department will enforce all aspects of the program except in those instances where an American worker claims that a job should have been offered to him or her instead of a foreign worker. In such cases, an arbitrator appointed by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service will decide the issue.

Under the compromise, a $500 fee per alien will be charged to all employers except universities and certain other institutions. The funds will go for scholarship assistance for students studying mathematics, computer science, or engineering, for federal job training services, and for processing and enforcement expenses. The fee will sunset after 2001.

Under current law, the Labor Department can only investigate a user of the H-1B program if an aggrieved party files a complaint. The compromise will allow the Department to investigate a company in certain instances where it receives specific, credible information that provides it with reasonable cause to believe that the company has committed a willful failure to abide by the rules of the H-1B program, has shown a pattern or practice of failing to abide by the rules, or has substantially failed to meet the rules.

While current law requires an employer to pay an H-1B alien at least the prevailing wage for the occupation, the compromise will also require the employer to provide benefits equivalent to those given to American workers.

Let me conclude with one point of legislative history. The compromise eases requirements on companies when they are petitioning for foreign workers who have advanced degrees. For example, companies who would otherwise have to comply with the two new attestations are relieved of this obligation. The bill actually uses the phrase a master’s or higher degree (or its equivalent). The point I want to make is that the term master’s or its equivalent refers only to an equivalent foreign degree. Any amount of on the job experience does not qualify as the equivalent of an advanced degree.

This bill is a workable compromise that deserves our support. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.