H-1B Battle Moves To Iowa

The H-1B battle has moved to Iowa ahead of the Jan. 3 caucus. And Computer World has a very informative post on the discussions going on in Iowa on the subject, check out Computer World - National tech policy battle plays out in Iowa as caucus nears:

Gary Scholten, a senior vice president and CIO at Principal Financial Group in Des Moines, has met with several presidential candidates who are running in Iowa's Jan. 3 caucus. Principal is one of the largest companies in the state, and candidates often stop by its offices, giving Scholten the opportunity to relate his IT workforce concerns directly to three Democratic candidates: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Sens. Barack Obama and Christopher Dodd.

Scholten wants to see improvements in science and technology education and changes in immigration policy. While his company has hired H-1B workers in the past, it has not done so recently, because of competition for the visas from other companies. This year's allotment of 65,000 visas, plus 20,000 for graduate-degree holders, was claimed in a day.

Scholten said Principal employs 2,000 IT workers in Iowa and about 400 to 500 overseas, but he said he is more concerned about the impact that visa restrictions have on smaller companies.

"The smaller companies, the entrepreneurial companies, are going to be hurt first, and that's where a lot of the economic growth comes from," Scholten said.

The Republican and Democrat candidates have almost a month remaining until the Jan. 3 caucus, and any tech themes that come up during the campaign will be a microcosm of the national debate.

Also in Des Moines is Dante Vignaroli, a mainframe developer for more than 30 years who lost his job to an H-1B worker. Vignaroli was laid off in 1999 and has earned a living doing mostly contract work since then. The candidates aren't knocking on his door, but that isn't stopping him from trying to meet them.

Vignaroli has talked to Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democrat, about H-1B visas, and he has twice discussed the issue with an Obama aide. He has tried to raise the issue with Sen. Hillary Clinton, but his health won't allow him to stand in line long enough to meet her. However, he says he has no intention of giving up on his mission to warn the candidates about H-1B visas.

"You don't just lose your job, it's like your whole country betrays you," Vignaroli said.

There are some sharp feelings about H-1B visas in Iowa, which is also home to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has emerged as leading critic of the H-1B program. Grassley has used his power to investigate the use of the visas. He recently asked the National Institutes of Health, a federal entity, why it has hired more than 300 H-1B workers.

But Iowa is also counting on technology to help boost its economy, said Leann Jacobson, president of the Technology Association of Iowa. IT companies employ 46,350 people in the state and contribute $2.5 billion annually in wages. The actual number of IT workers may be three times that figure when tech workers at companies such as Principal are counted, she said.

The top priority of the association is to help increase the science and technology workforce, Jacobson said, and it's working on initiatives to encourage secondary school students to consider math and science. Those efforts include attempts to get more money for paid internships. It also wants increases in the H-1B cap.

In an association survey conducted last May that received 54 responses from IT executives, 86% of those polled said they that have had trouble finding qualified employees among Iowa residents. In total, the respondents said they had 1,332 job openings this year. Jacobson said that when that number is extrapolated to include all of the state's tech job openings, it could be as high as 10,000 and growing.

Moreover, 59% of the survey respondents said they required a four-year degree for at least 75% of their available jobs. But as in other areas of the country, the number of college graduates in Iowa with computer science degrees is declining.

Doug Jacobson, an Iowa State University professor of electrical and computer engineering, said the number of students enrolled in computer science and computer engineering programs has dropped about 50% over the past few years, with enrollments in those programs currently at about 600 to 700 students.

Jacobson (who's no relation to Leann Jacobson) said that surveys of high school students show that their interest in enrolling in a college computer science and engineering program has declined by 40% in recent years. The reasons have to do with the lingering impact of the dot-com crash, concerns about offshoring and fears that there are no jobs, even though program graduates are being hired, he said. But high school students are also seeking careers that help make society better, "and they don't feel that IT is a field that does that," said

Doug Jacobson is involved with a new program called the IT Olympics. Earlier this year, high school students involved in the program built computer equipment and systems and then defended their networks against professional hackers. The students stayed up all night to keep the systems running. It helped prove to the students that "they can do things well above anything in their course," he said.

The program is being expanded to include game design and robotics as well as security. Nearly 500 students from 40 high schools are expected to participate in what he calls a two-day "celebration of IT" in April, Jacobson said.

Meanwhile, Principal is also trying to meet workforce needs by working directly with the Des Moines Area Community College. Under a program the company set up with the college this year, students can get full-time employment at Principal if they reach certain objectives, such as receiving an associate's degree in applied science in business information systems with strong grades. But the company last year also decided that it needed to leverage the global workforce, and established a subsidiary in Pune, India, for application development and quality assurance. The Indian operation accounts for roughly 10% of Principal's IT employees.

Unfortunately they have missed a key argument over the H-1B battle, the H-1B process is a very significant contributer to why the number of students enrolled in computer science and computer engineering programs has dropped about 50% over the past few years (which happens to coincide with the live of the H-1B process). Instead of being seen as innovative and valued members of a growing U.S. economy, the H-1B process has devalued computer science professionals making the a plug in commodity which college students have no desire in becoming.

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