A skills gap: Companies say visa rules treat fashion models the same as tech entrepreneurs
Frank Davies, San Jose Mercury News -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/31/2008 12:44:00 PM
The U.S. government begins accepting new applications for H1-B visas today, and high-tech companies are again pushing to increase the number of such visas issued.
Representatives from Oracle, Microsoft, and other tech companies were in Washington last week lobbying for an increase in visas for skilled workers. But they conceded they were facing difficult odds in Congress.
Robert Hoffman, an Oracle VP, predicted that applications for H-1B visa lottery will quickly exceed the 65,000 available slots, with winners determined by a random process that ignores market needs and economic benefits. Last year, the 65,000 cap was reached on the first day of applications.
Under this "surreal system," Hoffman said, a fashion model (the next Heidi Klum) will have the same chance at a visa as a tech entrepreneur (the next Andy Grove) who generates jobs.
Hoffman said he hoped Congress would double the current cap.
Barring that, he also proposed legislators free up unused visas from previous years. For instance, during the 2001-02 recession—after the tech boom fizzled—the total of unused H1-B visas grew to about 300,000.
But that's not likely this year, despite an impassioned plea from Bill Gates two weeks ago, and persistent lobbying by many businesses. After the collapse of a comprehensive immigration bill last year, Congress has been reluctant to do anything on immigration except to tighten border and workplace enforcement.
"If you could isolate a vote on this one issue (more visas for skilled workers), it would get through," said Victor Johnson, senior adviser to the Association of International Educators. But with many groups "screaming about immigration," the reaction of many members of Congress is, "Not right now."
Business and academic leaders, at a briefing hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said they would look for opportunities on Capitol Hill to get what Hoffman called "short-term relief" on visas and a backlog of green card applications. But he said he was frustrated at the "all-or-nothing message we're hearing from Congress."
While an increase in visas has support in Congress, some members, such as Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have focused on past abuses by job brokers who have misused the H-1B visa system to bypass U.S. workers and bring in foreign workers for lower wages.
The Programmers Guild, an advocacy group for U.S. computer programmers, has argued that the skilled-worker visa system has not protected the rights of U.S. workers. The group did agree with Hoffman and Gates that the lottery system should reward U.S. firms that create jobs in the United States.
Large tech employers contend that the low visa cap forces them to outsource some jobs and operations. Hoffman said that Oracle had about 75 percent of its H-1B visa applications granted. Of the remaining applicants, about half were relocated overseas and half were let go.
Angelo Amador, director of immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that "many manufacturers don't want to play the lottery, so they move as many people abroad as they can."
A new study by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan group that conducts research on trade and immigration, found that H-1B visa-holders are not displacing U.S. workers and their firms are growing overall. "For every H-1B position requested, U.S. tech companies increase their employment by five workers," the study found.
The study cited the example of Sonnet Technologies, based in Irvine, Calif., which hired an H-1B applicant from Japan who helped develop the Japanese market for the company's products, resulting in the hiring of 10 more production personnel.
Thursday's briefing was designed to show that the skilled-visa issue is not just the concern of tech companies. Officials with the National Association of Manufacturers, a powerful lobbying force in Washington, and the Partnership for New York City, a group of corporate and investment leaders, said the limits on visas were hampering business growth.
California ranks first among H-1B visas, with 18.2 percent of the total in 2006, and the New York tri-state area accounted for 21 percent of the visas, with many going to small employers needing foreign talent to connect with global markets, said Diana Torres, a VP of the Partnership.
