Posted on 10/06/2004 2:27:43 PM PDT by JesseHousman
The U.S. used up its supply of 65,000 temporary visas for skilled foreign workers in a single day. Advocates for raising the quota said that bolstered their case.
South Florida businesses that rely on talented foreign workers to fill technical positions are out of luck until next October -- unless they have an applicant already in the pipeline.
Federal officials closed the 2005 application window for highly coveted foreign professional visas just hours after it opened.
The unprecedented rush for temporary visas for those skilled foreign workers demonstrates U.S. companies' pent-up demand for candidates in such technical fields as engineering, mathematics and research. And, South Florida experts say, it increases the likelihood that companies will outsource jobs overseas.
''It means, unfortunately, that employers here will have less options in terms of hiring,'' Deborah Vazquez, chief executive of the Miami-Dade and Broward County recruiting firm Protech, told The Herald. ``We will have fewer candidates, [less] talent in a situation in which demand very much outstrips supply.''
The quota of 65,000 ''H-1B'' visas was filled Friday, the first day of the 2005 fiscal year, meaning that U.S. companies must wait until October 2005 to hire more foreign workers under the visas.
Until two years ago, the government issued 195,000 of the visas annually. The allotment was slashed because of increased restrictions on immigration following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Job losses in the computer and high-tech sectors have made legislators reluctant to reinstate the bigger quota, even though U.S. companies have argued that most of the jobs filled are outside those sectors.
''It was a real wake-up call when these numbers were issued,'' said Sandra Boyd, who chairs Compete America, a corporate coalition pushing for more H-1B visas. ``I don't think anyone believes it's acceptable that a whole year can now go by without any access to these people.''
The H-1B visas have been popular with U.S. companies, which maintain that they cannot find enough American workers with advanced scientific and engineering degrees to fill critical jobs. Last year, the 65,000-worker cap was hit in February 2004, about five months into the fiscal year.
Tammy Fox-Isicoff, a Miami immigration attorney who helps foreign professionals get H-1Bs, said lawmakers must raise the visa cap again or ''carve out exceptions'' for disaster areas like Florida after the hurricanes or for professions with employee shortages such as teachers or healthcare professionals.
''This situation is terrible that when the doors open to H-1Bs, it swings shut on the same day,'' Fox-Isicoff said in an interview with The Herald. ``It's not good for American business.''
Companies were allowed to submit applications against this year's quota in April.
Theodore Ruthizer, who heads the business immigration practice at Kramer Levin, a New York law firm, predicted that the scarcity of slots will worsen unless Congress expands the program.
''It just proves the numbers are inadequate,'' he told The Financial Times.
U.S. companies have been urging Congress to adopt an interim measure by exempting from the quota any foreign national holding an advanced degree from a U.S. school. That would add about 20,000 positions a year.
About two-thirds of students taking advanced mathematics and engineering degrees at U.S. schools are foreign born. U.S. companies say they will be at a disadvantage should those students go to work for overseas competitors.
And immigrant-rich South Florida has a large share of that talent.
''We have so many universities here with foreign students who come and graduate and look for jobs in the area,'' Andrew Koerner, a partner with the Leaf Koerner law firm in Miami, told The Herald. ``It's just sad to see these small-business owners suddenly stopped from being able to grow their businesses.''
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© 2004 Herald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miami.com
lol ... but seriously, you dont waste an H1B on a landscaper. they have to pretend the skill is unique technical skill.
If Toyota can't find the workers they need here to make the cars THEN they are going to go back to Japan (or elsewhere). Why would all these businesses come here if they can't find the labour they need here? America needs to be the best place to do business in the world. By this foolish law being in place we are shooting ourselves in the foot.
Huh?? Where's the word "vibrant"??
I really like that idea. It should seriously be submitted to a conservative or libertarian member of congress or senator for consideration as a bill.
WTO rules will allow that in a few years. Seriously. Then we'll watch the witch scream. :)
Then why is there a rush for the H-1B visas?
To put things into perspective, I tried searching for engineering related jobs at IBM (http://www-1.ibm.com/employment/). There are over 1,000 open full-time positions at IBM. Not suprisingly, many of these are engineering or IT related.
GE (http://www.gecareers.com/) lists 2,357 total jobs of which many are engineering or IT related.
Another interesting search is at a company that has been in the news for layoffs. At Sun Microsystems (http://www.sun.com/corp_emp/indexus.html), I found 628 engineering and IT related jobs.
When fortune 50 companies are hiring engineers and IT professionals in the thousands, and dot-bomb companies are hiring engineers and IT professionals in the triple digits, things are not that bad.
Last year the company I worked for began cutting back positions. I wasn't laid off, but my future advancement was bleak with this company. I began sending out my resume. It took me all of a month to find a better paying job in a completely different field. I turned down several offers before, and after I accepted my new position.
Why won't they hire me?
It's hard to say without knowing you better. Speaking as someone who interviews and hires employees it might be a spotty job history, poor interview skills, low education, signs of mental instability, unattractiveness, or a criminal past. Perhaps you forgot to mention you have a hardhat.
If most of these criteria don't match you, then I'd have to guess karma or divine payback. Unemployment is 5.4%. Have you tried asking an employer for a job?
Why would we ship him back?
We need to go one step further. Inform companies that outsource work that the U.S. is not coming to the rescue if they get in political, financial or military trouble. A company that chooses to outsource must shoulder the risk if they perceive a reward. Subsidizing outsourcing by means of OPIC should be cut off cold.
I met a fair number of Welsh immigrants in San Diego. Nearly all of them waited on lottery lists for YEARS. When they were permitted to come to the US, they were required to have sponsors and jobs. That was still true even in the early 1990's. People who play by the rules have a very tough road to enter the country legally.
Right on the mark. Why invest $20,000 to $40,000 in a college degree when your potential employment marketplace is being undermined by dirt cheap foreign competition. My son shifted from pursuit of a degree in astrophysics to a business degree. He's a licensed real estate agent (at age 21) and cultivates a mostly Spanish speaking customer base in San Diego.
The shift to multi-national corporations and the wholesale abandonment of the educated U.S. citizen is going to kill the desire to pursue a 4 year degree with the expectation of decent employment with a large U.S. company. Self employment in small business is a viable alternative.
My sister is an RN in San Diego. After 25 years in that line of work, she laments that 90% of her time is spent filling out paperwork to provide legal protection to the hospital. Very little "nursing" or patient contact is involved in her daily work. The U.S. trained nurses have become discouraged with this turn in the nature of their work. Malpractice insurance also digs into the income of a nurse. Hospital budgets are strained by legally enforced requirements to provide care to illegal aliens. The combination of disinterest in the screwed up state of medicine and the economic pressure on the hospital makes hiring foreign workers on the cheap an attractive alternative.
Sounds like something straight out of a labor Union handbook. Why don't we just get the government to arrest all hard working American Businessmen and regulate all business's that don't fit a workers paradise ideal ?
I'm going to be applying for HB-1 visas for America as well in that we will be offering our product there in the coming year. Why do I need Russian labor?, are they skilled?, yes, and they are specialized in the construction techniques that we produce.
I pay them a "fair" wage, I expect 12 hour work days and people don't do that for free. What's a fair wage, whatever they are willing to accept.
In fact I may even build them a bunkhouse they can live in. A perk, last guys I had lived in a camping wagon. Am I being sarcastic, no, not really. Flame away.
Of course, we would expect her to say that. She makes her living by importing foreigners to take over jobs.
Meanwhile, I saw a firm I was contracting with just fire all their IT people, but made their severance packages contingent upon training the low-wage foreign replacements to do their jobs.
Makes it sort of hard to take when legislators like Kay Bailey Huchinson says that there just aren't any Americans qualified to do these jobs.
It's the other way around. These people can't work here normally. There are more than enough Americans to fill these jobs. Of course these visas fill up rapidly; what American company wouldn't jump at the government candy of legally importing SLAVES in leiu of hiring Americans.
Did someone piss in your cornflakes? I tested the assertion that was made about the fake job listings by looking over the Qualcomm listings in San Diego. I had a pretty good laugh because I personally took the jobs of 4 Java programmers, 3 C++ programmers and a EE as they were expelled back to Qualcomm. I was more productive by myself then all the cheap H1B labor. My company billed my time at $256/hour. Qualcomm deserves the quality of people they get at H1B rates.
I have more work than time available. My accrued vacation is maxed at 480 hours and I've lost a week of paid time off in the last 4 months. In my "spare" time I'm tutoring a student working on an MSEE thesis project. His project is on par with embedded systems skills I taught to students 20 years ago.
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