Both the H-1B and the L-1 visa programs, under which millions of high-tech workers are being "imported" into the US for stints of no-more than 6 years, are just another installment in a long, long series of abusive labor practices that have been followed since before the Republic was founded in 1776.

These practices come under various names ... Google "peonage," "coolie," "unfair labor," "sharecropping," "indentured servant," and "involuntary servitude." Follow the myriad indirect links to other Wikipedia (et al) topics.

Tennessee Ernie Ford "owed his soul to the comp'ny store." (Plus, he was paid in scrip.) The visitor to the Hotel California "can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

And this ... "you can never leave" ... is a designed principle of these Visa programs: the immigrant "requires sponsorship" from a single company, such that s/he cannot leave the employ of that company on risk of deportation. In the specific case of the L-1 program, the immigrant is the employee of a contracting company, and so can neither leave the employ of that company nor have any meaningful say as to their work assignment. "Expenses" including room and board can be deducted from pay, and the employee has no say as to what the room-and-board conditions might be.

(I personally witnessed seventeen neatly-suited young men filing out of one apartment, to board a private bus and drive away. I glimpsed sleeping-bags inside. "Illegal as hell, but there they were." The situation didn't really hit home to me until I saw that. "Those look like nice, earnest, young people ... why are they being made to live like that?")

These people do not have any voluntary, free, choice as to where they work, under what conditions they work, what hours they work, and in some cases, where they live or what is deducted from their pay.

The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibited "slavery or involuntary servitude," and it is a little-known fact that Northern industrial interests fought to strike the inclusion of that second part, since they knew it would be the death-knell to their system of "indentures." Various other legal decisions have clarified what "involuntary servitude" can mean, including "peonage." Whether peonage or not, this certainly is a form of "servitude," in my eyes, and it is not "voluntary."

When, today, over 3 million people are "imported" into America (and other countries) to do jobs under conditions that American citizens would not tolerate ... or that would not be legal in regards to them ... and displacing those citizens in the process, maybe there should be a public outcry that what is being done to them is unconstitutional, under a law that's been on the books for about 150 years. This is by no means the only violation to that legal principle that has been cooked-up, but I think that it is undeniably another one, and that we shouldn't accept it (nor ask the immigrants to).

What do you think?

I don't think about it so very deeply. I have peers who came from India, how and in what form I do not know, but they have families and houses and are citizens. That's all I really know. Those who come as temps and get treated badly, yes that's bad. From the perspective of India, a lot of developers are staying there and forming companies there, and being successful. That's my limited view. I've also seen Indians and Pakistanis come here and then head back home after a year or so citing that they liked their homeland better. But that's about the limit of my exposure.

Certainly, anyone can point to examples where "the American Dream" happened, exactly as it's supposed to happen, to another group of "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." But there are, unfortunately, many for whom that is not happening. Not a single one of those seventeen young men looked to be much more than 20 years old. Their eyes were still bright. They were not yet worldly.

If the H-1B visa programs were changed so that they did not require "sponsorship," and if the L-1 ("comp'ny store") program were eliminated outright, then the situation would be drastically different. But, in that case, the programs probably would not exist at all.

Every generation has had its own particular flavor of "the peculiar institution," and ours is no different in principle, although the legal theory is new. The immigration promise is turned on its head: you're not a citizen, it's quite difficult for you to become one (only "permanent residency" is within reach, and then only if you make love to a citizen), and you don't get to stay. You wind up exactly where you started. "So long, and thanks for all the fish."

And yet, like every other "peculiar institution," everybody knows it exists but nobody talks about it ...?

Hi...

I disagree with the argument that these type of visas are needed to begin with. There is absolutely no reason why U.S. citizens cannot perform these jobs. If the company is required to pay U.S. wages and benefits and have the appropriate working conditions, then so be it.

I would also like to see the law(s) that allow U.S. businesses to outsource jobs in 3rd world nations (to obtain cheaper labor) repealed and have the jobs brought back here.



Regards...

The argument that jobs "should be" brought back to USA won't fly, until the programs by which those jobs are exported are declared to be illegal ... and/or a danger to national security, which danger I think is very real.

Capitalists have always sought "cheaper labor." Those "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" were sought from all over the world to work in factories. "Coolies" were brought to build the railroads, then sent back home, and if a few of them died in a hazardous explosion or fell from a cliff-face, they were basically expendable.

There's an old saw that said that managers were told to take care of the mules: if a mule died, it had to be replaced at company expense, but a man did not.

Nevertheless, when millions of people are "imported," never to become citizens and never to be allowed the opportunity to do so, and especially, never to be allowed to work for the company of their own choosing, that arrangement is effectively an Indenture. The "L-1" program is especially grievous in this regard, because the "imports" literally work for "the comp'ny." "Indentured service" has already been found illegal under American law, as has "peonage." When seventeen people walk out of one two-bedroom apartment, that's peonage.

When data centers are exported to "the happy little Cloud," and tied into the very guts of their companion domestic data centers, then it becomes impossible to know who has access to what data and what they might choose to do with it. The naivet of this arrangement would be comical if it were not so damned serious.

And, it's costing us billions of dollars. We can't go on pointing the finger at "far-away hackers," who manage to accomplish such capers as stealing the applications for Top Secret Clearances right out from under the Federal nose. These are inside jobs, performed by employees contractors ( "no one has 'employees' anymore ..." ), who were given access.

It's nothing new that capitalists exploit workers whenever they can. But why do we have a "Department of Homeland Security" (sic ...) when the biggest threat to that security is staring us in the face, albeit with a beatific (yet inscrutable) earnest smile?

Are we really so enamored of "it costs a little less," that we must experience the product of our folly before we stop being fools?

1. The USA needs cheap labor. Same is true for any superpower/empire.
2. US work visas provide an opportunity for many people outside the USA. I'm guessing you haven't traveled very much outside the USA.
3. The USA is built upon competition (at least in theory). If you can't compete, then you will fail.
4. US companies want maximum profit.

This is why everything is made in China now, and that's not gonna change. This is also why they outsource jobs. I'm not sure that the work visas are for the same reason. They are mainly to give opportunities to those who would be useful to the US, to work and maybe later move to the US.

That sort of thinking is disastrously short-sighted, metaschima.

Every generation, it seems, has its own version of "the peculiar institution," and every generation, for a time, seems content to look the other way. H-1B has re-created indentured servitude, and L-1 has re-created peonage. One hundred forty-seven years ago in this country, someone declared that this was "not okay here."

Corporations operate on the simple, and self-contained, model of "debits equals credits plus owner's equity." Nowhere in this picture is any of the nations in which those corporations operate, and maybe that's why people love creating corporations so much: "it's all about me." But a nation is about "hundreds of millions of people," and what mutually-sustains (and defends) them.

Anyone who comes to the USA on an H-1B Visa should not "require sponsorship," but should be free to work for any company and to leave that company of his/her own free will at any time, because "... involuntary servitude shall not exist in the United States." Likewise an L-1 Visa: you can set up your foreign company on American soil but you can't require your foreign workers to work only for you once they get here, because "... involuntary servitude shall not exist in the United States."

With that 147-year old Constitutional point made clear, and the "sponsorship" restriction struck-down, these Visa programs are free to continue.

And of course, if this "point made clear" suddenly obviates the economic advantages of the program, then the program's "economic advantages" were illegitimate, anyway. They are "the peculiar institution," and nothing more.

If the truth of the matter is that you are importing millions of people only because they cannot say "no" to anything that you tell them to do for six years ... and because they will "owe their soul to the comp'ny store" for the entire time ... as they live seventeen to an apartment and never have a car ... until you dispose of them send them back to be no better off than where they started ... all of which things are true ... then:

"Involuntary servitude shall not exist in the United States."