One of the toughest challenges for the media is to put a personal face on a story. They always want to have a subject to show how an issue affects an individual. This can be very tough for a national issue like H-1B visas. Over the years I have frequently received requests from reporters like "Do you know an American living in Peoria who has been replaced by an H-1B worker within the past three months?" This was tough even when I was working as a programmer. I saw Americans being replaced by H-1B workers first hand, but they were always in New Jersey.
One of the ways the lobbyists manipulate the media is to package a story and present it to a news outlet. The package come complete with a subject so the reporter does not face the challenge of finding someone local who has been affected. This is why most coverage of H-1B has changed over the years from stories about Americans being replaced by H-1B workers to stories about some individual who will be forced to leave the country.
A recent article from Bloomberg should arouse caution among you folks in the media who are approached by lobbyists bearing gifts of stories.
The subject of the article is one Cristina Martinez Mortola. Cristina is an engineer who received a master's degree in engineering management from the University of Southern California. She will be forced to leave the country and her job at SendHub if she cannot get an H-1B visa this April.
Unlike most similar articles, the author of this article has taken the step of seeking information from people who have a more critical view of H-1B.
The problem here is that a closer look at the tale of Cristina shows much of what is wrong with the H-1B program and the author has not picked up on it.
Take a step back from the lobbyist story angle.
The first sign that something is wrong here is that Cristina is an engineer with a master's degree, but she works in customer support. From a Google search one can find that she is answering questions like:
I signed up thru my gmail (Google) account. I am also trying to access this service thru the iphone app. However, it is not allowing me to log in. The only option I am given is phone number and password. I type the number and use my gmail password, and it says error. How can I fix this?
Looking at Cristina's education, she is clearly overqualified to be handling such work — an engineer with a graduate degree answering simple customer queries.
We are supposed to need H-1Bs because of a shortage of technology workers. Where is the shortage of customer support people?
If there really were a huge shortage of engineers, shouldn't Cristina have been able to find a job that used her graduate degree engineering skills?
If there really were a huge shortage of engineers, how was SendHub able to find an engineer with a graduate degree to handle mundane customer service tasks?
Minus the spin, we have an article that shows the engineering job market is so bad that engineers, like Cristina, have to take jobs outside their fields.
The article also explains why graduate programs in technology are packed with foreign students. Why should an American engineer invest in a master's degree to wind up doing customer support? Graduate engineering programs provide the prospect of immigration benefits to foreign students.
