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Tough laws for foreign IT professionals

After US, it is UK putting barrier in place against IT workers. UK’s home secretary Alan Johnson has announced that from next year onwards, a UK employer would have to announce all jobs to British workers in Jobcentre Plus for four running weeks (Up from two)- before these can be thrown open to workers from other nationalities.

In addition, there is a minimum wage prescribed for a skilled worker (£17,000 to £20,000) that is nothing but a disguised attempt to debar IT workers from low-wage countries. All this has been done on the recommendations of UK’s Migration Advisory Committee. Besides the Committee has also recommended other changes that are protectionist in nature, such as not offering permanent residency to intra-organizational transfers involving an expat employee. Lastly, the points-based system for immigration has also been overhauled to protect domestic workers.

The committee’s report said that intra-company transfers – often popular with offshore outsourcing companies – should not lead to a right to permanent residence. It also recommended the government give consideration to whether the level of resource devoted to enforcement of intra-company transfers is sufficient and whether the degree of transparency could be increased.
Unions and employment groups in IT have been critical in the past of firms that use intra-company transfers to bring in offshore workers to fill roles that may previously have been occupied by local staff.

Meanwhile, in the US, under President Obama, the proposed H-1B and L-1 Visa Reforms Act of 2009 seriously curtails the ability of employers who sponsor H-1B applicants to bring them onshore without the green signal of the US Labor Department. As per a report in Computerworld the bill introduced by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), if an employer wants to “place, outsource, lease, or otherwise contract for the services or placement of H-1B non immigrants with another employer,” He/she must give a specific undertaking that:
• The employer sponsoring H-1B professional has not laid off any onsite US employee in the last six months nor plans to do so in the next six months
• The visa holder will be controlled and supervised by the sponsoring company and not the client company where he or she is placed; and
• The contract is not essentially a “labor for hire” agreement between the H-1B employer and the employee he/she is sponsoring.

All these are calculated measures aimed at preventing the displacement of American workers. Nothing wrong in that, except that if such artificial barriers to free trade are justified with respect to one factor of production, i.e., labor, then they are automatically justified with respect to other factors of production as well, i.e., goods. Developed countries should not then greedily eye the teeming millions that comprise “the market” for US-manufactured finished goods and services.

Years ago, the US government had attempted to put similar limits on L-1 visas, but were later relaxed during the Silicon Valley boom.

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