Nation of Immigrators - A public policy blog on America’s dysfunctional immigration system

[Blogger's Note:  Today's blog comes from an erstwhile Washington insider, Leon Sequeira, a former Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor, who offers a view beyond the ken of most business immigration lawyers, including myself. 

Leon's topic is the arcane and dense subject of the H-2B visa category for skilled workers  in short supply (proven through a labor market test) whose prospective job will be seasonal or "temporary."  U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says a job is temporary if it involves "a one-time occurrence, a seasonal need, a peak-load need, or an intermittent need." H-2B workers must also be coming "temporarily" to the U.S. (meaning that s/he can establish the intent to return to his/her permanent residence abroad). Moreover, not every foreign citizen can obtain an H-2B visa; rather, the individual must be a citizen of one of an alphabet soup of countries, ranging from Argentina to Vanuatu.

Leon also represents a group of plaintiffs in a pending suit against the DOL challenging its administration of the H-2B visa program. 

Because he knows whereof he speaks, this post is a must read for anyone wanting a clear understanding of how the Executive Branch can reap chaos when it builds an immense regulatory superstructure to interpret spare legislative text and regulate the U.S. economy.  The law of unintended consequences is thus on full display.]

Immigration-Reform Duplicity:

The Obama Administration's New Temporary Worker Rules

By Leon Sequeira

We’ve all heard lots of happy talk over the past few years from the Obama Administration about the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Regular readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with the President’s platitudes concerning his desire to do something about the undocumented and our broken guestworker programs. After three-plus years, however, many are left wondering where and when we’ll actually see some action. Lost in all the focus group-tested talking points and splashy videos on the White House website, touting a commitment to fixing our immigration system, is the fact that one of the President’s cabinet secretaries has been quite busy implementing immigration reform – a very troubling version of immigration reform.

On January 21, the Department of Labor released a massive 145-page revision of the H-2B temporary non-agricultural worker program regulations that will dramatically increase the bureaucracy, complexity, and cost of the program. This so-called “reform” follows closely on the heels of DOL’s revisions last year to the regulations describing the process for calculating wage rates in the H-2B program. Taken together, the two regulatory packages look a whole lot like a comprehensive effort to destroy a guestworker program.

The H-2B program enables employers to hire foreign workers to fill relatively lower-skilled temporary or seasonal non-agricultural positions when U.S. workers will not take the jobs. H-2B should not be confused with the H-2A program, which applies to agricultural workers and which is also under attack by DOL, but that is a post for another day. H-2B should also not be confused with the H-1B program for specialty (often high-tech) occupations.

The H-2B program is capped at 66,000 visas annually, but in the past couple of years fewer than 48,000 visas per year have been claimed. It should come as no surprise that with decreased business activity during the great recession, many employers need fewer employees to keep up with customer demand. But even with an average national unemployment rate of nearly 9% over the past year, there continue to be numerous temporary and seasonal jobs that U.S. workers simply do not want to perform. H-2B workers often fill these jobs and by doing so enable businesses across the country to flourish and employ scores of U.S. workers in other positions.

DOL’s culminated its first assault on the H-2B program in 2011 when the agency decided to dramatically accelerate implementation of the new wage regulations and require employers to immediately increase H-2B wage rates by, in some cases, more than 120%. DOL launched this broadside based on an illogical premise that the wages being paid by H-2B employers, which are set by DOL to ensure no adverse effect on U.S. workers, were somehow causing wage depression. Never mind that DOL produced no evidence of wage depression caused by H-2B workers. Nor did DOL explain how a mere 48,000 H-2B workers, spread across dozens of occupations from coast to coast could possibly result in wage depression in an economy that employs nearly 140 million people.

Perhaps most glaring was DOL’s failure to explain why, even if wage depression did exist, it would not be more likely to be the result of some 10 million undocumented in the workforce, rather than the 48,000 H-2B visa holders who were in the country legally working (at DOL-mandated wages) for only a few months at a time. Just a few years ago in another rulemaking, DOL reached that precise conclusion: to the extent any wage depression could be said to exist, it is likely the result of the undocumented who frequently toil in an underground economy.

In stark contrast to DOL’s current baseless assertions, economic studies have found that rather than depressing wages, H-2B employment is associated with rising wages, and perhaps just as importantly, job growth.

Facing the ruinous costs that would be imposed by DOL’s 2011 regulations, several H-2B employers and industry trade associations filed two separate lawsuits in September (one in Louisiana and one in Florida) against DOL in an effort to block the wage regulations from taking effect. It turned out that employers were not the only ones outraged by DOL’s actions. Before either court could rule on the employers’ requests for an injunction, Congress entered the fray. Democrats and Republicans, in a rare show of bipartisanship, joined together to stop the DOL regulations for the remainder of the fiscal year with an amendment to the agency’s 2012 funding bill. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, one of the Senate’s most liberal members, led that successful effort. As a result of the political fallout, and in a major rebuke to his own Department of Labor, the President was left with no real option other than to sign the legislation into law.

Undaunted, however, DOL continues its White House-approved assault on the H-2B program with the latest round of regulations scheduled to take effect on April 23. Congress is watching and over the past couple of weeks, the Labor Secretary has been aggressively questioned during budget hearings about the rationale for Department’s actions. Largely dissatisfied with her answers, members of both the House and Senate have now introduced resolutions disapproving of the regulations. Unless these latest regulations are blocked by a federal judge or by Congress, 2012 could mark the beginning of the end not just for the H-2B program, but also for a number of U.S. businesses that rely on H-2B workers.

As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Unfortunately, the Administration’s troubling actions thus far implementing immigration reform are a long way from the President’s soaring rhetoric on the topic. This disconnect should give pause to both employers and immigration practitioners who believe we can’t wait for this President to act.

Are we a trustworthy nation?  The world waits to see if the American government becomes a deadbeat on August 2, when the debt ceiling is hit.  Will the country break faith with its creditors?  Will it stiff Social Security recipients, the ill and disabled, fallen warriors and others whose lives or fortunes depend on Uncle Sam's unflagging reliability.

The New York Times reported recently on a set of already broken American oaths. Many would-be "Special Immigrants" in Iraq who've worked for the U.S., are stranded there, facing death threats, living in stairwells, checking for car bombs underneath their vehicles, losing hope that their oft-promised yet long-delayed U.S. visas will ever arrive -- green cards that Congress ordered to be fast-tracked -- all the time chastising themselves for their gullible belief in America's words.

A letter writer commenting on the Times story bewailed our "exceptional[ly]" roguish behavior: 

What have we become? Our word means nothing now. We break our word to Iraqi friends who helped us. Do we think that those whom we’ve left dangling in the wind will remain our friends? We want to break our word on debts we’ve already accrued.

Do we think that our creditors will continue to invest in us because we are “exceptional”? . . . I despair for a country that I see becoming . . . more removed from what I once thought were our high moral standards. And a country that does not keep its word.

As these despondent Iraqis have come to realize, institutional word-breaking is endemic within the U.S. immigration ecosystem. One small example tells a tale.

Consider the H-1B visa available to nonimmigrant workers in "specialty occupations" who possess at least a university sheepskin or its equivalent in the workaday world.  For those who prefer their learning via chart rather than text, click here; otherwise, read the following indented paragraphs:

This visa started life in 1952 as the H-1 for employees of "distinguished merit and ability" -- a term later interpreted to refer to degreed or degree-equivalent "professionals." In 1990, however, Congress rebranded the visa the H-1B and added an array of worker protections to be enforced by the Department of Labor (DOL), including a requirement that foreign citizens in H-1B status receive at least the going rate (the "prevailing wage") in the local area. The process was designed to be speedy.  It would be "attestation-driven" with penalties applied only later if DOL were to investigate a complaint and find that an employer had violated the worker-protection duties of the law.  The employer's attestation, in the form of promises that must be kept, is made under oath on a form known as a "Labor Condition Application," or LCA. 

The DOL is obliged to "certify" an LCA unless it is "incomplete" or "obviously inaccurate."  The employer then submits the certified LCA to an agency of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), together with a work-visa petition. USCIS then determines if the job and the worker qualify as "specialty occupations," meaning that the job requires and the individual possesses that combination of theoretical and practical knowledge typically gained in a baccalaureate program or through equivalent work experience. Thus, the DOL protects H-1B workers, while USCIS confirms visa eligibility.  All was well with the world, or so we thought . . .

Because the prevailing wage is defined by geography (usually the wage considered prevalent in a particular metropolitan area), the DOL maintains listings of prevailing wages for locales around the country.  If an employer learns of an unforeseen business need to dispatch an H-1B worker to a worksite not listed in the LCA, the DOL requires the employer to file a new LCA and obtain DOL's certification.

USCIS's H-1B regulations, however, do not expressly require employers to submit a new or amended visa petition when the change merely involves a job relocation.  After all, there'd be no reason, in principle, why such a filing would be necessary, since the employee and the job itself would not have changed.  Both would still be the very same specialty occupations that USCIS had already screened and approved. 

To be sure, at one point in 1998, USCIS's predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), had proposed a rule that an amended petition be filed for such job changes, but never took final action.  Instead, INS twice issued policy guidance, the Hogan and Aleinikoff memos, that each confirmed there is no need to report such changes unless the change invalidated the LCA.  The problem for INS and now USCIS, however, is that the DOL regulations do not prescribe any situations which invalidate an LCA.  Under DOL rules, an LCA may only be withdrawn by the employer or allowed to expire.

The view that a "geographic move" by an H-1B worker is not a material change (presumably because such a move does not by itself invalidate the associated LCA) was then confirmed by a senior USCIS official, Efren Hernandez III, Director of the agency's Business and Trade Branch, in 2003 correspondence to the American Council for International Personnel.

Now comes the institutional word-breaking.  Recently, USCIS has begun to rule in numerous individual cases that the employer's failure to amend the H-1B petition (something only the employer can do) and secure the agency's okay for a worker's change of job location means that the H-1B worker -- merely by following her employer's instructions to appear at a new worksite -- has violated nonimmigrant status.  Failing to maintain status is no small matter.  It is a violation of law that can lead to the worker's and her family's removal from the United States and banishment for at least five years.  It can also cause the employer to be charged with continuing to employ the worker while knowing that the right to work has been terminated -- a felony  -- unless the employer immediately fires the worker. 

The bitter irony here is that by relying on the USCIS to keep its word the guileless, relocated worker (the supposed "beneficiary" of H-1B labor protections) and the trusting employer have been placed into a cauldron of hot immigration water. Also ironic is the notion that serious thought is given to "Rewarding Employers Who Play by the Rules," as the Migration Policy Institute recommends, when the agency conferring the reward has systematically failed to publish intelligible rules of play.

How could this happen?  Four plausible theories come to mind:

1. Failure to publish a final rule.  Legacy INS and its successor, USCIS, must be greater believers in "The Secret" (visualize intention and it will manifest) than in the notice-and-comment prescripts of the Administrative Procedures Act.  Just because the agencies float an idea publicly does not make it binding law.
2. Ignorance of DOL regulations.  When Messrs. Hogan and Aleinikoff issued policy guidance, it seems no one bothered to study the DOL regulations.  Had they done so, they would have understood that LCAs can never be "invalidated." Hence, they would not have referred to the "invalidation" of the LCA, but would have at least expressly stated in policy guidance (or better yet in a final regulation) that an H-1B worker's change in work site from one metropolitan area to another requires the filing of an amended H-1B petition.
3. Writing a letter does not make the letter binding law. USCIS and INS know the rules of procedure and precedent.  They should not have allowed the release of informal, non-binding letters that can only serve to mislead stakeholders.
4. USCIS's creeping mission.  As armies of USCIS Fraud Detection and National Security ("FDNS") investigators and contractors performing "site visits" have appeared at business doorsteps nationwide, some learned that the H-1B worker whose file was to be audited had moved to another job site.  To an unschooled investigator (see # 2 above), this "suspicious" conduct looks like either fraud or a technical violation of the H-1B rules (even if the employer proffers an LCA covering the new worksite). 

None of these reasons justify indifference to the unpaid debts of promises unkept.  The poet, Robert Service, whose surname is what USCIS should be all about, said: "A promise made is a debt unpaid." USCIS should heed the poet's wisdom and put "Services" rightly back into its own name by promptly paying its debts to the stranded Iraqis endangered by American loyalty and by repairing the damage it has caused to relocated H-1B workers and their employers falsely accused of violating U.S. immigration law.

On February 18 and 19, the University of California (Irvine) hosted a symposium where many of U.S. immigration's Rock-Star professors came together to try and solve "Persistent Puzzles in Immigration Law."  The topics covered a wide expanse. A subject discussed that particularly interested me is Congress's often inexplicable delegation of regulatory authority among a surfeit of federal agencies that administer and enforce the immigration laws, each with its area of real (or presumed) expertise and overlapping responsibilities. 

One speaker mentioned her concern about the possible mis-use of E-Verify by some employers to screen current or would-be workers for employment eligibility, even though that kind of screening violates the terms of use under the memorandum of understanding with Homeland Security (DHS).  She proposed that perhaps Congress should authorize the Department of Labor (DOL) to investigate and punish this type of violation.  During the Q & A, I suggested that, even if the problem is as widespread as the speaker feared, the Department of Justice (DOJ) should do the policing, because, based on my experience, DOL must first improve its abysmal record of administering the immigration laws before Congress grants it any more power.

Regular readers of this blog would be forgiven for assuming, given my recent rants on labor certification (here and here), that the DOL's PERM program had come to my mind.  No, actually I was thinking of the H-1B program and a January 2011 Government Accountability Office report (GAO-11-26). Although the report contains a wealth of data, and is written from a glass-half-empty perspective, it actually shows that access to cheap foreign labor -- the usual slam against the category -- is not the real motivation for its use.  Rather, as the National Foundation for American Policy notes in its analysis of the GAO data, "hiring the best candidate for the job, whether U.S.-born or foreign-born, is the primary consideration for employers" who sponsor H-1B workers.

I will offer many critiques of the economy-harming H-1B program in future blog postings, and assail the GAO's flawed analysis and implied bias reflected in the title of its report ("H-1B VISA PROGRAM - Reforms Are Needed to Minimize the Risks and Costs of Current Program").  For now, in the au courant Washington spirit of reducing government expenditures and eliminating unnecessary regulations that burden business, I propose that Congress take the DOL out of the H-1B application process altogether, and that USCIS serve solely to approve or deny H-1B visa petitions and grants of nonimmigrant status.  

To gain a visual understanding of my point, consider this GAO chart depicting the current H-1B process:

As the chart shows, the only role for the DOL at the outset of the H-1B process is to perform a ministerial task, i.e., to review an employer attestation form (known as the Labor Condition Application or LCA) to confirm that it is not "incomplete or obviously inaccurate."  The GAO agrees with me that Congress should consider eliminating this step, and instead requiring U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to receive and certify the LCA when adjudicating the H-1B visa petition:

To reduce duplication and fragmentation in the administration and oversight of the H-1B application process, consistent with past GAO matters for congressional consideration, [Congress should] consider eliminating the requirement that employers first submit a Labor Condition Application (LCA) to the Department of Labor for certification, and require instead that employers submit this application along with the I-129 application to the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for review.

Eliminating the LCA review by DOL would shave seven days off the time it takes before USCIS can adjudicate an H-1B petition, since this is the time Congress provided the DOL to "certify" the LCA. This savings of time is especially important each year in March when every day counts as employers scramble to file their H-1B petitions by April Fools Day in order to fall within the woefully small H-1B annual quota. 

USCIS opposes the GAO's suggestion, however, offering the following rationale to the GAO:

Homeland Security officials believed that Labor would be better suited to review the LCA because Labor has specialized knowledge about the computation of prevailing wages.

USCIS's justification for shirking a task that would result in an obvious time- and cost-savings doesn't stand up to close scrutiny.  Most employers use the DOL's online O*Net database and Standard Occupational Classifications to obtain the prevailing wage, and USCIS could easily cross-check those sources (as it now does with its VIBE system) to make sure the correct wage figure is used.  Even in the comparatively rare situations where an employer submits an alternate wage source, USCIS could easily adopt and apply DOL's regulations on the requirements for use of a union contract, an "independent authoritative source" survey, or "[an]other legitimate source" of prevailing wage data, or consult with the DOL.

Avoiding front-end delay is just a first step in process improvement.  The more urgent challenge is how best to consolidate enforcement of the H-1 program in one agency.  The current enforcement hodgepodge is reflected in this GAO chart:   

There is no reason that H-1B employers, by regulation, must be prepared to face a triad of investigations by three federal agencies housed in three different departments.  H-1B enforcement responsibility should be consolidated into one agency, and the rules governing the procedures, scope and duration of an investigation, along with employer due process protections (such as the Good Faith Compliance defense added by the H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004) should be promulgated under the customary requirements of public notice and opportunity for comment under the Administrative Procedures Act. 

As I suggested to the immigration law professors, my recommendation would be to place all immigration policing authority with the Office of Special Counsel for Unfair Immigration-Related Employment Practices (OSC) in the Justice Department under an expanded grant of authority.  The money we'd save and the burdens lifted by permitting USCIS to serve as sole H-1B adjudicator and pinning on OSC the lone sheriff's star would be substantial. An added benefit would be that a neutral actor, the Justice Department, would have no dog in the fight, unlike the DOL whose mission is "foster[ing] and promot[ing] the welfare of the job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the United States," rather than according fair process to employers. 

So, Congress, in keeping with the zeitgeist, can you spell?:

I-M-M-I-G-R-A-T-I-O-N

D-E-F-I-C-I-T

R-E-D-U-C-T-I-O-N