 | |
| |
TechnologyDaily Mobile
Laboring Over H-1B Visas
by Danielle Belopotosky
While much of the immigration debate is focused on President Bush's proposed visas for low-wage guest workers, U.S. technology companies have their eye on the other end of the workforce spectrum and on long-term reform of the visa class for workers with advanced degrees.
H-1B visas, which are reserved for highly skilled workers and typically go to people in science and engineering fields, reached its federally mandated cap of 65,000 for fiscal 2005 on Oct. 1. That cap, technology groups argue, essentially prevents companies from hiring qualified workers in those fields, thus undermining U.S. global competitiveness.
Under pressure from the technology industry, Congress in November exempted from the H-1B visa cap 20,000 more foreign-born workers who have received master's or doctoral degrees from U.S. universities. Those exemptions will become available March 8.
But Sandra Boyd, chairwoman of Compete America and vice president of human-resources policy for the National Association of Manufacturers, expects those exemptions to be exhausted within a month or two, so groups like Compete America, whose members include Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Oracle, are still angling for broader changes to the system.
"We thought the exemptions would set the stage for bigger reform," Boyd said.
A Green Card Placeholder
Change might come in the form of a more streamlined path for foreigners to get green cards to work in the United States. According to U.S. companies, Boyd said, many workers use the H-1B visa category because it takes so long to get green cards. "It is a place to sit while waiting for the green card processing," she said.
Last year, Microsoft made 1,203 requests for permanent residency for its workers with H-1B visas, according to data that the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTech) union in Washington state received from the Labor Department. Oracle filed more than 400 requests, followed by Intel and IBM.
A typical wait for green-card approval can be as long as two or three years. Of the H-1B recipients, "nearly 100 percent sitting on these are in green-card process," Boyd said. "We are interested in keeping this category for temp workers" while "making sure that people are on a path to green cards and are dealt with in a streamlined way," she added.
Critics of the H-1B visa program argue that foreign workers take jobs from qualified Americans and that there are enough skilled U.S. workers to fill the positions.
WashTech President Marcus Courtney said there could be "some merit to the case in looking at how green cards are processed and streamlining the process ... The question, though, is there has to be a rational basis for the demands for immigration in this country. This is clearly having an impact on domestic employees."
What The Numbers Mean
Labor data showed unemployment for American workers in nine high-tech categories, including computer-hardware engineering, falling by nearly 50,000 jobs, to 146,000, from 2003 to 2004. But Courtney said those numbers should be interpreted with caution because other causes could impact the drop in unemployment.
Some people find jobs in other industries, and those numbers are not accounted for in the labor statistics. "Over 50.5 percent of our clients changed industries in 2002," said John Challenger, CEO of the consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. "Industry-switching is a fundamental job-search strategy."
That could be because the actual number of lost jobs has not been replaced by the creation of new jobs, Courtney said. The U.S. technology employment market shrank by 18.8 percent from March 2001 to April 2004, according to labor data. "We have failed to regain those jobs," he said.
But John Steadman, president of the engineering group IEEE-USA, attributes the decrease in unemployment to the restoration of the 65,000 cap on H-1B visas. The visas peaked at 195,000 in fiscal 2003.
"Because U.S. industry has been more restricted in its ability to bring overseas guest workers into the country," Steadman said in a statement, "it has had to hire more U.S. citizens to fill open positions. This is good news for U.S. technical professionals."
Taking The Case To Congress
Still, industry advocates remain convinced that global competition is real. "There is a growing appreciation that we are really competing for talent, and we are competing for talent in terms of attracting students here," Boyd said, adding that the foreign students who are educated in the United States need "the ability to work here and to stay here."
According to Compete America, nearly 50 percent of students who earn advanced degrees in engineering are foreign-born. In nine universities in Massachusetts, including Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, foreign nationals account for some 49 percent of doctorate degrees in engineering and 41 percent of master's degrees in engineering.
Courtney refutes arguments that American schools are not producing skilled American workers who can fill the technology jobs now filled by H-1B visa applicants. "If American schools were failing so miserably, they would never hire out of American universities," he said of tech firms.
With the additional 20,000 visas expected to be filled soon after they become available in March, the technology sector likely will look to Congress once more for help. "There are signs and indications" that the technology industry will advocate for an increase in the H-1B visa cap, Courtney said, and "they have strong support in Congress from Republicans."
Last year, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, introduced legislation that eventually was enacted as part of a fiscal 2005 spending bill, but he is noncommittal on the issue for now. "There are no plans until we see how well the program is working" to make further adjustments to the H-1B visa program, said Blair Jones, a spokesman in Smith's office.
NEW FEATURE
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
