H-1Bs issued dropped by half?
H-1Bs issued dropped by half?
Date: Monday, August 12, 2002 8:49 AM
*** H-1B NEWSLETTER ***
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I think the drops in H-1B are being wildly exaggerated, but even if only
half the number of visas are being issued I don't understand why any have
been issued this year. Thousands of high tech workers can't find jobs while
companies continue to import cheap labor and outsource to cheap labor
countries such as China and India.
Perhaps the smaller number of visas issued has more to do with bureaucratic
delay than anything else. In this article an immigration attorney said wait
times for H-1B visas have increased from a month to 16 weeks. That might
mean that the numbers of visas will go way up once the backlog is reduced.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3837145.htm
Posted on Sat, Aug. 10, 2002
Number of H-1B visas issued has fallen by half
By Jennifer Bjorhus
Mercury News
The number of H-1B visas issued to temporary foreign workers has dropped by
half so far this year, a sign of the torpid economy and tech implosion.
The INS issued about 60,500 new H-1B visas in the first three quarters of
its fiscal year, from Oct. 1, 2001, to June 30 -- a 54 percent drop from the
130,700 H-1B visas it issued in the same period of its previous fiscal year.
There are 18,000 petitions pending, the INS said.
The plunge comes on the heels of a record year. Last year, Congress raised
the annual cap on the visas to 195,000 and created exemptions for university
researchers among others.
H-1B visas are good for up to six years and are popular in the tech industry
for importing engineers. About half of H-1B visas go to people doing
computer-related work, many of whom come from India and China. Tech
companies such as Oracle, Intel and Hewlett-Packard are among the program's
biggest users.
Post-Sept. 11 scrutiny of visas and the reorganization of the Immigration
and Naturalization Service have also likely played a role in the drop, said
one immigration attorney.
``Right now immigration is sort of in a mess,'' said Margaret Wong, a
longtime immigration attorney in Cleveland. Wong said wait times for H-1B
visas have increased from a month to 16 weeks.
Critics and supporters of the long-controversial H-1B program agree the drop
is not surprising, but they interpret it differently.
Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of
America, said the decline shows that employers are using the H-1B program
appropriately. They're importing fewer foreign workers because they're doing
less hiring and there are more U.S. workers available, he said. Miller said
he doesn't think increased scrutiny of visas after Sept. 11 has anything to
do with the drop.
``Clearly H-1Bs are for use when there's a shortage. With the continued
slowdown in the IT industry and other industries that use them, then the
system is working as it was designed,'' Miller said. IEEE-USA, the U.S. arm
of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, disagrees.
It argues that the visa numbers may be down, but that 60,500 new H-1B visas
are still too many, given how many U.S. engineers are out of work.
The IEEE-USA has called on Congress to study how the expanded H-1B visa
program and the increasing use of overseas engineering staffs are affecting
the job market for U.S. engineers. Unemployment among engineers rose to 4
percent in the second quarter of this year, and increased even higher for
computer scientists and electronics engineers, according to data the
IEEE-USA released last month. While that's below the 5.9 percent national
unemployment rate, it's a high for engineers.
``We clearly have many unemployed domestic high-tech workers that could be
available for those same jobs,'' said John Steadman, an IEEE-USA vice
president.
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