Dear Senator Abraham:

I am a graduate electrical engineer with B.S. and M.S. degrees from MSU and a PhD degree from the U of M, all in electrical engineering.   I have over 33 years experience working in advanced engineering projects and systems in high technology industry. For the last 15 years I have been mainly working as a self employed professional engineer, licensed here in Michigan.  I also hold adjunct faculty rank at MSU, WMU and MSU and both teach and conduct industrially and governmentally sponsored research at all three schools.   I have lived in Michigan all my life and personally know Rep. Vern Ehlers, having had him speak at various state engineering society meetings in Lansing when he was still in the state legislature.

I have also been quite active professionally in the 220,000 U.S. member Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).  In this letter I would like to address one issue that IEEE-USA President John Reinert recently testified to your committee about, namely your proposal to raise the cap on H1-B visas to 90,000 from the current limit of 65,000.  The rationale for your requested increase appears to be an alleged shortage of engineers and the threat this poses to America’s industrial competitiveness.

Perhaps one way to counter the claim of the alleged shortage is to go right to your home area of Southeast Michigan and look at what ads have appeared recently run by the state employment office in Detroit in the IEEE monthly membership magazine, Spectrum.  I grabbed the recent February and March ’98 issues off my shelf and went to the help-wanted sections in back.  After about 10-15 pages of University academic positions and general help wanted ads by named schools, corporations and institutes I came to the Classified Industry Positions section.  Over 90% of the ads there took on a decidedly different appearance than the previous ones, an appearance that strongly suggests an attempt to justify an H1-B visa.  The problem in my opinion is that in most cases the salary offered is far below what a real shortage would require according to the law of supply and demand.  In particular I have circled the MI employment office ads in these two Spectrum issues and you will notice they are little more than what a current B.S. engineering degree graduate fresh from one of our local universities receives.

I can document Spectrum ads from Michigan’s Detroit Employment appearing almost every month for several years now, most offering even less money than those above for engineering jobs yet requiring both a degree and multiple years experience.  Similar situations hold for many ads appearing in Spectrum from employment offices in other states and I have also marked these on the attached pages copied from that magazine.   In my own personal case I have noted no "bidding war" for my technical services as a consultant.  Rather my in-state rates for consulting on a regular basis have increased only from $[Editted]/hr to $[Editted]/hr since 1983 and my client companies still view these as "high-end" consulting fees.   Again if a true shortage existed companies would be paying PhD consultants with 30+ years experience what they pay their attorneys or CPA’s.

Now, Senator Abraham, I do believe there is a shortage for very specific engineering individuals.  These are either true "superstars" or are "niche-fillers".   The former can single-handedly turn a companies’ fortunes around by their creative talents.   The latter are extremely specialized persons who know everything there is to know about a very specific topic, say a computer operating system, a wide-area network, or the latest very large scale integrated circuit fabrication (VLSI) technology of interest to a given company.  As you will note from the attached Spectrum pages there are a few high salary offers and these could be for attracting an alien "superstar" or "niche-filler".  However the number of Andy Groves or Bill Gates in the universe is quite small and increasing the H1-B quota by almost 50% won’t make any more such superstars appear.  Similarly if American industry is only hiring specialists who can be immediately productive, solve the problem du jour, only to be let go to keep the bottom line looking good, then we as a country are going to lose the industrial competitiveness race with the rest of the world.

What I see from my additional academic experience is that many foreign nationals co-op or intern with American industry.  When it comes time for these students to return to their native lands they simply don’t want to and their employers seize the opportunity to hire a trained engineer at a bargain price.  But I ask you, Senator, are more foreign 21-25 year olds the answer to solving American competitiveness?  What about all the senior individuals who have kept up technically with their profession, such as myself, for the last 30 years or more but are now underutilized or even forced into early retirement?   In my own experience I have had to consult in literally dozens of different electro-technology areas to dozens of industrial clients in the past 15 years with no problems changing technologies or learning new ones.  Further my ability to see across disciplines has enabled me to make some rather important contributions to most of them, contributions which have driven major products or projects.

In conclusion I ask you, Senator Abraham, that you rescind your proposal to increase the H1B quotas.  If anything I would add those possessing engineering degrees to the same category as the physical therapists and nurses whom you propose to exclude from the H1B program altogether.  As a resident of the state and a voter I request that you justify your current position on H1B quotas to me.  I shall be looking for your reply soon and hope to have a face-to-face dialog with you sometime later this year when you are back in Michigan.

Sincerely,
 

Dr. Ronald J. Fredricks, P.E.
Consulting Electrical Engineer
 

CC:
Mr. John Reinert, IEEE-USA President
Mr. Raymond J. Uhalde, Assistant U.S. Secretary of Labor
Representative Vern Ehlers, U.S. House Of Representatives