A Democratic lawmaker who represents Silicon Valley tech workers is taking aim at the University of California over its decision to exploit a visa loophole that sends U.S. information technology jobs overseas.
The UC San Francisco medical center next month will begin replacing well-paid American IT workers with low-wage immigrants to cut costs, becoming the first public university to ship U.S. tech jobs offshore under the H-1B visa law, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The 97 IT workers, whose contracts with UCSF will be severed Feb. 28, have been ordered in the meantime to train their replacements, who are employees of the India-based IT outsourcing firm HCL Technologies.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.), whose San Jose district includes much of Silicon Valley, said the move by UC undercuts its duty of preparing students who are working to join the tech industry.
"UC is training software engineers at the same time they're outsourcing their own software engineers," Lofgren told the Times. "What message are they sending their own students?"
H-1B visas were initially created to allow American companies to hire highly specialized foreign workers in temporary positions. Outsourcing firms have since penetrated the program to replace U.S. workers with low-cost immigrants, despite federal law mandating that the visas can't "adversely affect the wages and working conditions" of Americans.
USCF officials told the Times the school was forced to turn to outsourcing because of economic challenges, including the expansion of California's Medicaid program under Obamacare.
University staff said sending IT jobs offshore will save $30 million over the next five years under the HCL contract, representing a paltry savings of 0.1 percent of the UCSF budget, which was $5.83 billion in 2015-2016.
Lofgren joined California Democrats Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the fall to demand that UC President Janet Napolitano reverse the university's plan to outsource IT jobs, noting the H-1B visas are meant to "supplement—not replace—the American workforce."
Feinstein noted that the UC system received $8.5 billion in federal funds in the 2014-2015 academic year, calling it "particularly concerning" that the tax dollars would be used "to replace Californian IT workers with foreign workers or labor performed abroad."
"I understand that UCSF may need to cut costs for a number of reasons, but I firmly believe that this is not the way to do it," Feinstein wrote to Napolitano.