Tech Immigrants Boost Economy
Ravi Samavedam left grad school four months ago to move to Ventura County to take a new job.
He rented a second-floor studio apartment in a motel-style walk-up off Oxnard Boulevard, a seemingly endless stretch of gas stations and fast-food joints.
The apartment was bare bones: $550 a month for a kitchenette, bathroom, closet and one dark room. The thin walls and worn bluish carpeting only partially screened out a cacophony of car brakes, horns and rap music that rose from the working-class thoroughfare in this city of many immigrants.
As a noncitizen, the 26-year-old from Bhubaneswar, India, was here to play a little-known but increasingly important role in Ventura County’s economy. He’s not a cashier, dishwasher, burger handler or other commonplace minimum-wage employee stuck in a job that low-skilled Americans don’t want in a strong economy.
Instead, he’s an entry-level biochemical engineer, working at Baxter Hyland Immuno in Thousand Oaks--one of hundreds of foreign nationals who help fill vital niches at high-tech and biotechnology companies throughout the county.
Samavedam is allowed to work under a federal visa program known as H-1B, which Congress recently expanded at the behest of executives in Silicon Valley and other high-tech centers.
Locally, dozens of businesses say they couldn’t get along without the program.
“We have about 40 engineering positions to fill right now, and the president of the company would like them filled tomorrow,” said Kerrin Turrow, human resources manager at Accelerated Networks in Moorpark. “There’s no way I could do that without pooling from other countries.”
Of 230 employees working for the telecommunications equipment manufacturer, 16 hold H-1B visas and five more are pending. “It’s hard to get [Americans] to come from less expensive areas because it costs twice as much to buy a house here,” Turrow said.
In Ventura County, high-tech employment accounts for about 38,000 jobs, or 14% of the work force. That’s up from 10% in 1992. These jobs, generally in science, engineering and software development, often pay well. But recruiters say there aren’t enough qualified Americans coming out of universities to fill them.
Few outside the tech industry know that so many foreigners are helping companies stay competitive, said Michael H. Davis, a lawyer who recently assisted Samavedam with getting his visa.
“Just as you have in Oxnard Mexicans picking strawberries, you also have this whole hidden community that people don’t think about--all the Indians and Chinese and Pakistanis,” Davis said. “Nobody stops to think, ‘Who are the people who are staffing all these jobs?’ ”
*
The federal government does not track the precise number of H-1B visa holders working in each county, but local immigration lawyers estimate there are about 500 in Ventura County.
In the past two years alone, 110 companies from Ventura to Thousand Oaks asked for permission to fill 388 jobs with foreign workers, federal records show. Some prospective employees were from Ethiopia, Australia, China and India.
Recruiters ranged from high-tech companies such as giant Amgen in Thousand Oaks to less predictable bidders such as the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.
The department is trying to fill four forensic scientist positions in its crime lab, and is pursuing a candidate from England who applied over the Internet.
“Normally we don’t recruit outside the United States,” said sheriff’s personnel manager Kelly Shirk. “But a forensic scientist is a difficult position to recruit for.” American candidates have turned up their noses at the $46,670-to-$65,402 salary, because of this area’s high cost of housing.
Other local employers that have H-1B employees or are interested in them include Xircom Inc. in Thousand Oaks, Ventura-based Patagonia Inc., Houweling Nurseries in Camarillo, the Conejo Unified School District, Haas Automation in Oxnard and Jafra Cosmetics in Westlake Village.
Vitesse Semiconductor in Camarillo counts about 100 H-1B holders among its ranks nationally and 56 locally. Amgen has 85 H-1Bs among roughly 4,400 employees at its Thousand Oaks headquarters. Rockwell Science Center in Thousand Oaks employs a dozen foreign workers on H-1B visas. Baxter’s Thousand Oaks plant, where Samavedam works, has four employees on H-1Bs. Two of them are applying for green cards.
These companies welcome the national expansion of the H-1B program. “We’re in a growth mode,” said Rockwell human resources supervisor Irene Escoto-Garcia. “This increase will definitely allow us to expand our recruiting efforts.”
*
Congress voted in October to expand the H-1B program, from 115,000 visas issued to 195,000 per year through 2003.
These visas allow foreign nationals to work in the United States for up to six years without a green card, which grants permanent residency. About 640,000 foreign workers have been admitted to the U.S. on H-1Bs since the program began in 1992, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Many H-1B holders, including Tejpal Singh, 29, an Indian software engineer at Accelerated Networks, subsequently apply for green cards. “I’m trying to get a green card so that I can work for a longer period with this company,” Singh said.
Some foreign scientists are eager to work for American companies because they can’t make comparable pay in their homelands. Federal law requires employers to pay H-1B workers what a comparably skilled colleague earns at the company, or the prevailing industry wage for that job.
Other foreign workers find these technology jobs are not available back home. Some have always wanted to live in the United States, if only for a while.
The H-1B program has its critics, often Americans working in high-tech fields. One is Mark A. Mendlovitz, 37, a satellite communications engineer in Los Angeles. He questions whether there is really a shortage of skilled Americans. He thinks some tech companies prefer to hire foreign workers because some immigrants are so eager to get a green card they are willing to work longer hours for lower salaries, and stay with a company that will sponsor their green card even if it means turning away more lucrative offers.
Although the law requires that foreign workers receive comparable pay, Mendlovitz says that rule is often broken. Foreign nationals are unlikely to file complaints over their salaries, he said. In the long run, he contends, the influx of foreign workers keeps a lid on Americans’ salary growth.
But Mark Schniepp, executive director of the California Economic Forecast Project and an expert on Ventura County’s economy, said critics’ real concern is that they will be replaced by foreign workers, which he thinks is unfounded.
“We’ve got the tightest labor markets ever,” he said. “We’re trying to fill those [jobs] that are needed to keep these companies growing.”
*
At Baxter, Samavedam’s job is to trouble-shoot the manufacturing process for Recombinate, the company’s bioengineered drug that helps hemophiliacs. Although he declined to discuss his salary, his lawyer says it is slightly higher than the prevailing industry wage of $43,000.
Samavedam said he was earning more than enough to afford something more luxurious than his former Oxnard apartment with its sparse decor. At the same time, he said, those digs would be considered plenty in his homeland. He received H-1B approval at the end of November, four weeks before his student work visa was to expire.
Baxter hired Samavedam after he applied for the job over the Internet. The company relocated him from the University of Minnesota, where he had been working on his master’s degree in microbial engineering since 1997. Samavedam’s undergraduate degree from an Indian university in biochemical engineering, combined with his ongoing graduate studies, made him ideally suited.
Getting the H-1B lets him stay on at Baxter, but does not guarantee he’ll be able to obtain citizenship or receive a green card. The annual cap on work-based green cards is 140,000, and there is already a green card waiting list of more than 1 million.
Samavedam said he hasn’t decided whether to pursue U.S. citizenship; his parents and many friends are still in India. But he’d like the option. His 28-year-old brother, a computer software developer, is living and working in New York on an H-1B. His 30-year-old brother, who works for Motorola in Texas, has an H-1B and has applied for a green card.
The longer he’s here, Samavedam said, the more he takes for granted a way of life that’s easier and less crowded than the one to which he would return. At 26, he owns a new car; his dad was twice his age before he could say the same.
“Life is so easy here,” Samavedam said. “You don’t have to stand in lines. . . . You pick up the phone and use a credit card. In India, you have to be very rich to live comfortably.”
He’s found a network of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans in the San Fernando Valley; he recently moved from Oxnard to Canoga Park to be closer to them. He plays cricket games in Woodland Hills on weekends, and has discovered some restaurants that specialize in vegetarian cuisine. He attends the Malibu Hindu temple in Calabasas.
Though he appreciates his new life, Samavedam said he still misses intangibles about his homeland--a philosophy of life, a national sense of humor, a cultural belonging--that don’t quite translate across continents.
It will be six years before Samavedam must decide what to do about India. But as this personal drama unfolds, his duties at Baxter remain constant: keep product quality high, streamline operations and save money. If he does his job well, he solidifies overall job security for the mostly American staff of 485.
Supervisors at Baxter seem to like the young engineer and value his contribution to the company. But in the long run, whether Samavedam stays or goes isn’t likely to affect Baxter’s bottom line.
The company might have trouble finding a county resident to replace him, or an American for that matter. But as local tech recruiters have found, there are plenty of young, skilled foreign workers eager to move at a moment’s notice.
“There are a lot of people who could probably substitute for me,” Samavedam said with a self-effacing laugh. “I personally know a lot of friends who are trying to come to the U.S.”
