American IT firms want hike in skilled worker visa quota limits
Quota of 65,000 workers for the H-1 B visa program hurting US companies to compete globally.
American information technology firms, anticipating a another squeeze this year in the so-called H-1B visa program for foreign skill workers, are urging US immigration officials to increase quota limits, saying that the country needed more talent to keep it competitive in the world market, the Agence France Press (AFP) report said..
The AFP said executives of a board coalition of American IT sector businesses have expressed alarm that the quota of 65,000 workers for the H-1B visa program was “arbitrary and outdated” and was hurting the capability of US companies to complete internationally.
They warned that the H-1B visa program quota will likely to be filled the first day submissions are accepted by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services for the fiscal year starting October 1.
With this scenario likely to happen, the AFP report said American employers wanting skilled foreigners will have to wait for next year’s application to hire people in October 2009. This will be the second year in a row that the limit will have been reached on the first day and immigration officials will have to resort again to a “lottery” to award these visas.
The H-1B visa program was started in 1990 and allowed foreign scientists, engineers and technologists to be employed for up to six years, at the end of which they must obtain a permanent residency or return home, the AFP report said. A large number of skilled workers come from Asia, especially India.
“This is an arbitrary and outdated cap set in 1990,” said Robert Hoffman, vice president at software giant Oracle and head of the Compete America coalition Hoffman, in a talk before a meeting of business leaders and journalists in Washington last week.
“For the second consecutive year, US companies and research institutions will be forced to put plans on hold as they wait for a random lottery to determine who gets to hire the scientists and engineers they need. It’s no way to run a business, or a visa program,” Hoffman explained.
He noted that a recent survey showed that America’s top companies listed in the Standard & Poor’s 500 companies were in need of 140,000 skilled workers. “It’s not just a tech problem or an aerospace problem, it’s a national problem,” Hoffman said.
The AFP report said other business leaders blamed the H-I B visa program quota system and a backlog in other programs for permanent US residency for a shortage of computer scientists, engineers and other professionals, and argue that the inability to fill the jobs forces companies to outsource work overseas.
However, a number of American legislators appear to be unwilling to hike the quotas for H-1B visas due to a prevailing higher unemployment rate, the AFP report further said.
These as critics of the program argue that loopholes are being exploited by overseas firms, which send their nationals to the United States mainland at low wages and deprive Americans of employment, the AFP report further said. The reports said many of the biggest users of the program are technology firms located in India.
