Posted on 09/22/2003 12:14:29 PM PDT by AntiGuv
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is about to cut the number of employment visas it offers to highly qualified foreign workers from 195,000 to 65,000, immigration experts said on Monday.
Unless Congress acts by the end of this month -- and there is little sign it will do so -- the change will automatically take effect on Oct. 1. Employers, especially technology companies, argue the move will hurt them and the economy.
The change will affect the number of H1-B visas that can be issued each fiscal year. The visas are mostly used to bring high-tech experts from Asia, especially from the Indian sub-continent, to work in the United States for up to three years.
"The fact that Congress doesn't seem anxious to act reflects the political climate, with a lack of jobs for Americans," said New York immigration lawyer Cyrus Mehta.
"The pressure to change the limit will build up again when the economy picks up."
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the issue last week. Republican chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah noted that many U.S. high-tech workers are unemployed and the committee needed to find ways of helping them without hurting the country's ability to compete globally.
Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy said: "Given the weakness of our current economy, and the rising unemployment we have experienced under President Bush's stewardship, many who supported the increase in 2000 now believe that 65,000 visas are sufficient."
But Patrick Duffy, Human Resources Attorney for Intel Corporation, said finding the best-educated engineering talent from around the world was critical to his company's future.
"We expect that we will continue to sponsor H-1B employees in the future for the simple reason that we cannot find enough U.S. workers with the advanced education, skills, and expertise we need," he said.
Elizabeth Dickson, director of immigration services for the Ingersoll-Rand Company, speaking on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said: "In the near-term, we simply must have access to foreign nationals. Many of them have been educated in the United States. By sending them home, we are at best sending them to our own foreign plant sites, and at worst to our competitors."
Immigration attorneys expect the new rules to set off a scramble by companies to fill their slots early before the ceiling is reached. How quickly that happens depends on the state of the economy, they said.
BARN | BARN DOOR | >>>>======== COW ==>
What a deal!
Got news for you Liz. The reason that you can't find educated Americans is that you bumped them out of the universities to let in the foreign nationals.
A self fulfilling prophecy for which I have little sympathy. First you slit your wrists and then you camplain you're bleeding.
It is called, giving a $hit about your enighbor.
I said I was going to ignore this thread but...The reason you can't find educated Americans is because the standard of education in the public schools here is poor as compared to overseas. Therefore, the average HS grad in the US has a harder time finding a place in the universities when competing with foriegn students. Also, universities make more money out of foriegn students' tuition than that of US citizens or residents. Combine all that with Affirmative action and quotas to be met, and badabing.
That said, I don't really agree with the statement that you can't find educated Americans. Too much of a generalization for me.
Sorry, H1Bs do not pay income tax or social security, zero, zilch, nada. For employers, that gives them at least a 15% edge on US employees. Then when u factor in pensions, medical, etc. etc. --- no comparison
First, programming is not rocket science. The average high school B student can be trained to write lines of code. What that student needs is a chance to get into the equally watered down state university system to be trained.
I'm from California and at present 6% of the UC population are foreign nationals which is at the expense of these "trainable" students.
I always find that kind of thing quite funny ---- those kind of morale problems almost always mean poor quality top management. It's interesting how the CEOs and mediocre middle management will blame the guys at the bottom for poor employee morale ---- but the guys on the bottom aren't making the poor management decisions that affect morale.
That's true of any kind of business. Poor management will do random layoffs, never make arrangements for who will do the work those laid-off were doing. When a company starts laying off without fixing the real problems in management it can mean that company is having serious problems.
I once went to a seminar that said that if you're looking for an efficient company to count the levels of management, the very most efficient have only 4 levels ---- no matter how big, the least efficient have many more layers ---- important decisions never get made, everything is sitting on some assistant to the assistant manager, then it moves up and will sit on the assistant to the assistant director's desk for a few weeks and so on. No one really holds any responsibility, the blame gets shifted up or down.
This is a perfect example of why government is rarely the right answer, contrary the the beliefs of radicals in the democratic party.
They should be in a situation where every H1B that comes to maeirca is equalized with a trade barrier taken down by the government of India.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.