Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Immigration lawyers: Market controls H-1B visas

By Kent Hoover, ACBJ Wire Service

A year ago, employers filed 163,000 applications for H-1B visas during the first seven days of April, far more than the 65,000 work permits available for highly trained foreigners.

This year, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had received only 42,000 applications as of April 9. The government begins accepting H-1B applications on April 1 of each year.

The sharp decrease in H-1B visa applications this year is due to the weak economy, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“This indicates that H-1B filings really do reflect the realities of the marketplace,” said AILA President Charles Kuck.

“An arbitrary cap is not needed,” he said. “Let’s let the marketplace do its job and regulate the numbers needed.”

AILA notes that the government has received enough applications for the 20,000 H-1B visas that are designated for foreigners who have earned a graduate degree in the U.S. These 20,000 slots are exempt from the 65,000 cap.

“In boom times, when there are shortages of U.S. workers in eligible fields, you see more foreign workers with only bachelor’s degrees in the mix,” Kuck said. “Now, with shortages in only a few areas, the bulk of the H-1Bs requested are for expertise in highly specific fields that usually require advanced studies.”

The latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the unemployment rate is growing faster for engineering and computer occupations than it is for other professional occupations.

“At this moment, we need to get our high-tech work force back to full employment,” said Gordon Day, president of IEEE-USA, a technical professional society. “Engineers and other technologists create jobs. They need risk-tolerant capital to do it, so the government’s investments in technology, and its efforts to restore the banking and investment infrastructure are very important.”

IEEE-USA thinks the H-1B visa program should be reformed so that employers are required to make a good-faith effort to recruit U.S. workers before applying for H-1B visas. Employers also should be required to pay H-1B workers fair-market wages, according to IEEE-USA.

Congress imposed additional H-1B visa restrictions on employers who receive Troubled Asset Relief Program funding from the federal government.

Instead of offering temporary H-1B visas to foreign technology workers, the U.S. should instead make it easier for them to obtain green cards, which would allow them to remain in this country, IEEE-USA contends.

“We think that the best and brightest engineers and scientists from around the world should be encouraged to build their careers in the U.S. and contribute to our economy,” Day said. “The H-1B temporary visa program isn’t designed to accomplish that.”