Posted on 12/31/2009 5:01:14 AM PST by thackney
A few weeks ago, Houston immigration attorney Jay Aiyer started to see sure signs that the economy is rebounding: More of his clients requested work visas for professional foreigners and the government finally ran out of H-1B visas.
“If we're seeing business visas start to be used up, it means that the overall economy is in a growth pattern,” Aiyer said. “They're not going to be bringing folks in from abroad during a recession.”
For the last few years, it would have been futile for employers or their attorneys to submit H-1B applications past April, when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services starts accepting submissions. The limit of 65,000 petitions was typically reached within days of the application process opening, but the recession killed demand for these once highly coveted visas. The agency didn't dole out all the visas until last week.
Demand was once so great for engineers, geologists, technology experts and other white-collar workers, especially in the energy capital of Houston, that employers routinely trekked to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to increase the cap.
This year, the market demanded fewer workers, and many employers weren't willing to fork over the $5,000 or so in government fees and attorney bills needed for the visas.
“Companies, even if they had the need for these employees, they were choosing not to allocate their resources in that way,” said Vijay Kale of Kale & Associates, a Houston law firm.
Then, in a late December rush, all the visas were requested as the economy recovered.
The nation's unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage points between October to November to 10 percent. In Texas, it fell to 8 percent in November from 8.3 percent in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Why does anybody bother to fill out all this paperwork? They could just go to ACORN to get assistance in bringing these people in illegally, then wait for Obama and Holder to get legislation to make all illegals legal. And John McCain will help.
Ten percent unemployment in the US but— Whoo-Hoo! — we’re hiring foreign workers! Yee-Haaa!
Request for work visas means lower wages.
or it’s really bad where they are and they think our welfare system will take care of them.
And then there is always AMNESTY ...
Lawyers now are economists too.
Ah, good. We’ve got all the foreigners hired. Now maybe we can put some Americans back to work.
Why hire US workers at all? Visa employers are generally exempt from plenty of taxes. This is the sole reason business want to hire them and cry to the gov’t that there aren’t enough skilled workers. That is simply false. It is bottom line smarts that circumvent the tax code. This is not the company’s fault, this is the growing federal tax beast.
Probably not the best economic "analysis" around. This might have something to do with the severity of recessions outside the US, and what foreigners are willing to work for.
With 10% unemployment....there should be ZERO work visas needed for foreigners
Just more Economic Anti-Americanism and Anti-American Bigotry. The fact we have Americans needing work...is enough to kill any program that brings in non-Americans
The economy is not getting better....just dumber
“Visa employers are generally exempt from plenty of taxes.”
They are exempt from what taxes?
ping
“many foreign workers, including highly-skilled employees here on H-1B visas, pay no Social Security taxes whatsoever”
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1302/article_1127_printer.shtml
In addition, many guest workers pay no or minimal Federal Income Tax by being classified as non-resident aliens.
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc851.html
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=96352,00.html
I’m sure that being classified as non-resident alien is as carefully monitored as the applications for guest worker visas. /sarc
The premium pay requirement automatically weeds out applicants who hire foreigners to save money . . . except when they are really worth the 10% premium or more.
The Japanese Government also benefit with the extra taxes thus generated.
Non- resident aliens are not subjected to SS and FICA taxes, as far as I know. Employers flat out smart to use this tax shelter. Why do you think there are so many foreigners working for universities and other corportations? Did you really think they were smarter? End this exemption and we shut down importation of Anti- American immigrants!
Collectivization/centralization entails greatly increased risk of collective failure.
I agree that sounds like a perfect model. Unfortunately, our model is not going to change and we will continue to import anti- American workers under the guise of failed education. This is sad, because the truth of the matter it is the employer tax burden and not the lack of qualified applicants, that encourages this practice. Real workplace reform should start with eliminating this policy and implementing some of those Japanese policies.
H1B workers also count as "minority" (or "diversity", in today's world) workers as far as government headcounts go. It's a good way to make your diversity numbers in the IT world, where most Americans still left in those jobs would be classed as "non-minority".
LOL... did you really just say *diversity numbers*? OMG. Anyway, so it’s a double plus, less employer paid taxes and “diversity Numbers”. So I wonder which is the driving force, let’s think... an employee who costs less to employ or diversity? By jove, we can kill 2 birds at once! There is this Nigerian Student applicant.
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