In This Article
30-Second Summary
Headline Links: ‘U.S. Tech Companies Roll the Dice for Worker Visas’
Related Topics: Congress considers raising visa lottery cap
Opinion & Analysis: Tech growth slows, debate over visa expansion
Background: Number of applications keeps growing
Reference: History of highly skilled worker visas and who qualifies
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Visa Shortage Leaves U.S. Firms Competing for Foreign Talent
May 18, 2008 11:03 AM
by
findingDulcinea Staff
With work visas scarce, businesses are pushing Congress to expand access to highly skilled foreign workers. Critics say American workers could fill the gap.
30-Second Summary
On April 2, the day this year’s application season opened, the U.S. government received an estimated 200,000 requests for H-1B temporary work visas allowing companies to hire highly skilled foreign employees.
Less than a third will be granted.
A annual lottery is held for the coveted visas, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates predicted this year’s allotment of 65,000 would likely be gone in just one day, for the fifth year in a row.
“The unfortunate reality is that two countries alone, China and India, produce 10 times as many engineers as the United States does,” said CEO Tod Loofbourrow of Authoria Talent Management, who applied for two software architects.
Many companies say without visas, jobs will go unfilled, slowing growth in promising U.S. economic sectors, such as the technology industry.
But critics say U.S. companies are more interested in hiring relatively low-wage overseas workers than investing in better education for Americans.
Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley argues there is a “dire need to better train American students and workers.”
Others are concerned foreign workers may swell the ranks of those seeking permanent residence, and worry that below-market wages paid to visa workers could lower overall technology workforce income.
But after Gates testified before Congress for an increase in the cap on H-1B visas, Congress introduced two bills to expand the program. The legislation has broad support.
“Allowing the cap to stay so low effectively exiles not only the world's best and brightest but also the U.S. companies that employ them,” The Washington Post wrote.
Less than a third will be granted.
A annual lottery is held for the coveted visas, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates predicted this year’s allotment of 65,000 would likely be gone in just one day, for the fifth year in a row.
“The unfortunate reality is that two countries alone, China and India, produce 10 times as many engineers as the United States does,” said CEO Tod Loofbourrow of Authoria Talent Management, who applied for two software architects.
Many companies say without visas, jobs will go unfilled, slowing growth in promising U.S. economic sectors, such as the technology industry.
But critics say U.S. companies are more interested in hiring relatively low-wage overseas workers than investing in better education for Americans.
Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley argues there is a “dire need to better train American students and workers.”
Others are concerned foreign workers may swell the ranks of those seeking permanent residence, and worry that below-market wages paid to visa workers could lower overall technology workforce income.
But after Gates testified before Congress for an increase in the cap on H-1B visas, Congress introduced two bills to expand the program. The legislation has broad support.
“Allowing the cap to stay so low effectively exiles not only the world's best and brightest but also the U.S. companies that employ them,” The Washington Post wrote.
Headline Links: ‘U.S. Tech Companies Roll the Dice for Worker Visas’
This year’s crop of H-1B visas allows U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for three years, starting on Oct. 1, 2008, with the possibility of extending the visas for three years after that. Reuters reports that technology companies say the current system is a catch-22 because “the United States is not producing enough homegrown job candidates and won't let companies bring them in, either.”
Source: Reuters
Loofbourrow said the lack of U.S. workers is “not so much an issue of wages, because companies, they’re going to pay the wages they need to find the amount of talent they need. Even with the slow economy, he said that hiring in the high-tech sector remains robust: “In this category, the gap between the demand and the supply is 10 to 1 … there’s just no question that the demand for the smartest people in the world to work on the things that drive the economy is not going anywhere.”
Source: NPR
Related Topics: Congress considers raising visa lottery cap
After Bill Gates testified that this year’s H-1B allotment would probably be reached in one day for the fifth year in a row, two new bills surfaced. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' (D-Ariz.) Innovation Employment Act would double the annual H-1B visa cap to 130,000, and the SUSTAIN Act, sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), would triple the H-1B cap in 2008 and 2009, to 195,000. But critics of raising the cap point to a number of concerns that the program could be abused or drag down wages for U.S. workers.
Source: BusinessWeek
Gates said there is a “severe shortfall” in skilled U.S. technology workers, but Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote him a letter arguing that H-1B expansion is not the answer. “I’m concerned that some companies are more concerned about their bottom line than about the dire need to better educate and train American students and workers. The solution is not, in my opinion, importing more foreign workers. Rather, we must strengthen educational opportunities for America’s students and workers, as you noted,” Grassley wrote.
Source: Iowa Politics
Opinion & Analysis: Tech growth slows, debate over visa expansion
The technology trade association AeA released a study that said the United States added 91,400 tech jobs last year for a total of 5.9 million, but the high-tech manufacturing sector lost 29,800 jobs, or 2.3 percent of its workforce overall. "While we are certainly pleased to report that the technology industry added jobs nationally and across nearly every state, national tech growth slowed in 2007," Christopher Hansen, president and CEO of AeA, said.
Source: PC Magazine
Patrick Thibodeau asserts on the Computerworld blog that there are five reasons H-1B visa cap will increase, including that “H-1B opponents have no clout.” “If H-1B visas weren’t part of the larger immigration reform issue in Congress, the H-1B cap would have been increased long ago. The opponents have been piggybacking on the broader immigration debate and they know it,” he writes.
Source: Computerworld
Some American workers have protested expanding the program, like John Miano, a programmer who owns a New Jersey software company, who testified in Congress in 2006 that the program lets companies replace Americans with foreigners at lower wages.
Source: The Houston Chronicle
A Washington Post editorial says the H-1B cap does not reflect current needs: “H-1B visas are reserved for the world’s best and brightest, and barring their entry is economic self-sabotage. The cap keeps out doctors, engineers and other specialists—people who save lives and often create jobs for others in America. One need only look at the national origins of founders of companies such as Google and Sun Microsystems to realize that foreign talent has helped keep the U.S. economy on the cutting edge.”
Source: The Washington Post (free registration required)
Background: Number of applications keeps growing
The 65,000 H1-B visa was hit in record time in 2007, PC World reported, with the government reporting receiving 150,000 applications on the first day they were accepted.
Source: PC World
Houston software consultant Sridar Kora applied for 20 visas through the H-1B program for his company in 2007, and only got 10. He expects this year to be worse. "It's been very difficult for us to get all of the employees we need,” he said.
Source: The Houston Chronicle
Reference: History of highly skilled worker visas and who qualifies
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has a question and answer section on H-1B visas on their website. According to the site “The H-1B is a nonimmigrant classification used by an alien who will be employed temporarily in a specialty occupation or as a fashion model of distinguished merit and ability.”
Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
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