TOPICS
TOPICS
Immigration offices flooded with visa petitions for tech workers
Federal immigration offices have been flooded during the past two days with applications from technology companies for special visas for highly skilled foreign workers.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began accepting applications on Monday for the 65,000 H-1B visas available for fiscal 2008, and the window for applications is almost certain to close by Tuesday evening.
USCIS spokeswoman Chris Rhatigan said that more than 150,000 H-1B petitions had been received by service centers in California and Vermont by the close of business on Monday -- more than double the amount visas that are available. USCIS is required to accept applications for at least two full businesses days.
Rhatigan said USCIS would begin manually entering the data for all the H-1B applications it receives during the first two days into a computer-generated system that will randomly select which ones will be evaluated for approval. She did not estimate how long the data entry process would take because it is not yet certain how many applications will be entered into the system.
"The computer-generated process makes this a fair and impartial system," she said.
The overflow of applications means that it will be a toss-up as to whether even the applications that were received the moment the filing process opened will be approved. Companies throughout the technology sector are looking to use the visas to fill vacancies for highly skilled jobs with foreign workers.
"As bad as a lot of people thought it would be, this is a lot worse," said Peter Roberts, an immigration lawyer at McCarter & English in Stamford, Conn. "The impact on companies is going to be commensurately worse."
Roberts also noted it is troubling that companies are seeking the visas to fill so many positions they do not feel can be staffed adequately otherwise.
Robert Hoffman, a lobbyist for Oracle and the co-chairman of the Compete America coalition, said closing the application process so quickly effectively will lock out students who are set to earn their degrees this spring. Applications for the next round of H-1B visas available for fiscal 2009 will be accepted in April of next year.
"It really indicates how important it is for Congress to address this issue," Hoffman said.
Two House members have floated a proposal to boost the current cap on H-1B visas to 115,000. But that proposal, sponsored by Reps. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is part of a comprehensive immigration reform package that addresses a host of other border security and citizenship issues - so its fate currently depends on whether Congress can pass expansive immigration overhaul legislation.
"We have every reason to believe Congress is serious about comprehensive immigration reform," Hoffman said. "It would address both the short-term and long-term problems."
COMMENTS
- This is again about the money. What are they paying for these "High Tech" positions. Not what a US citizen should make. I just received my weekly "USAJOBS", and the same poisitons that were GS-13's last month, are now GS-12's. Engineering supervisors are being advertised as 12's. The Army is advertising lots of enginnering positions at YD-2. The Federal government continues to talk about the graying of the federal work force, the brain drain, experience that is being lost, and all the while lowering the wages they are going to pay, and taking away of benefits. How would you like to go to a University and sweat through the process required to build a competent "Techincal" person, only to be held under the thumb and paid less than a manager who's degree required more thought of who's party they need to be at to assure the proper circle of innfluence, than how they were going to pass a Statistics course! The priorities in the Federal work place are wrong. If you need technical people, pay them their worth and provide meaningful work. Don't make them do the jobs that the "Others" can't do, just because it's hard, and it doesn't fit in with the social circle! Hire the right people for the right job, pay them their dues, provide recognition, job satisfaction and you'll get all the help you need. Continue on your present course, you'll get what you deserve! Civil Slave Posted April 10, 2007 9:55 AM
- Why are we not training our own children to do these jobs? m aust Posted April 6, 2007 1:04 AM
- My thought: Do we want foreigners to have access to our computer systems? Osama bin Laden would pay any amount of money to have conspirators in the US. Who knows how many of these immigrants may be terrorists? Who do you choose? How can you be sure they are not terrorists? What kind of background research can be done in some of the foreign countries? How did the terrorist in the 9/11 attack gain control? It only took a handful of terrorists to attack our country and kill Americans on American soil! GovExec.com reader Posted April 5, 2007 3:52 PM
