Tech companies push for more visas for highly skilled foreign workers

Tech companies push for more visas for highly skilled foreign workers

Published 16 April 2015

Tech companies seeking more visas for highly skilled foreign workers are pushing their agenda as the United States grant visas to a number of immigrants in a lottery which began this week. Supporters of the campaign say 233,000 people are vying for 85,000 H-1B temporary visas. Some critics want to cut back on the H-1B visas, blaming the program for displacing American workers, butcalls to scale back on H-1B visas will have to overcome a campaign backed by powerful groups. In 1999, Congress raised the cap to 115,000 to help the booming technology sector. That limit soon rose to 195,000 before falling back to its current level in 2004.

Tech companies seeking more visas for highly skilled foreign workers are pushing their agenda as the United States grant visas to a number of immigrants in a lottery which began this week. The companies are sharing the story of Belgian entrepreneur Pierre-Jean “PJ” Cobut, who, if unable to obtain a H1-B work visa before his student visa expires in June, may have to move out of the United States. Cobut is co-founder of Palo Alto’s Echo Labs, a health care device startup he runs with his Israeli co-founder Elad Ferber, who is also waiting for a H-1B visa. “If it comes down to it, we’ll move (to Canada),” Cobut said. “We can’t be fighting this battle forever. At a personal level, it’s really stressful and a distraction to running the business.”
A campaign backed by Silicon Valley tech leaders has launched a Web site and a Twitter hashtag called “#LetPJStay” to share Cobut’s story, along with stories of other immigrants who are waiting to receive permission to work in the United States. Supporters of the campaign say 233,000 people are vying for 85,000 H-1B temporary visas, but former U.S. Representative Bruce Morrison (D-Connecticut), an immigration lawyer and lobbyist who supports engineers wanting permanent immigration status, say the number is not a reliable indicator of how many jobs there are. “A huge percentage of these applications are from offshore, outsourcing operations,” he said. With “absolutely no penalty to overapply,” companies led by staffing firms based in India are filing for as many foreign employees as they can in order to increase their chance of getting a higher share of people who do get visas. Morrison said that while corporations favor H-1Bs, the United States would be better off issuing more green cards which grant permanent residency.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, some critics want to cut back on the H-1B visas, blaming the program for displacing American workers. This month, Congress called for an investigation into abuse of the H-1B program after allegations emerged that Southern California Edison was replacing laid-off information technology workers with new hires from India.
Still, the call to scale back on H-1B visas will have to overcome a campaign backed by powerful groups such as Michael Bloomberg’s Partnership for a New American Economy, which promoted Cobut’s story, and FWD.us, an immigration lobbying group founded by FacebookCEO Mark Zuckerberg, and supported by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, all of whom represent companies that recruit a large number of H-1B workers.
On Tuesday, FWD.us sent a dozen immigrant entrepreneurs to join U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) as he reintroduced his Immigration Innovation Act, which aims to increase the H-1B visa cap to 115,000 and as high as 195,000 depending on economic conditions.
In 1999, Congress raised the cap to 115,000 to help the booming technology sector. That limit soon rose to 195,000 before falling back to its current level in 2004. Of the H-1B visas available today, 20,000 are reserved for immigrants with advanced degrees.
“Three out of ten people have a chance of getting in … or four in ten if you have a graduate degree, the lowest it’s ever been,” said Todd Schulte, director of FWD.us. “It’s a tragic reminder we have an incredibly broken, outdated immigration system. The last major overhaul we had was 29 years ago, in 1986. Cutting-edge consumer technology was my Atari.”
Cobut has a business degree from Stanford University and hopes he gets through the first H-1B lottery round which prioritizes immigrants with advanced degrees. “I don’t know if H-1B is the answer, but I guess it’s an easier battle to pick to increase the quota rather than changing the system,” he said. While Silicon Valley remains a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship that draws talented people from around the world, “that reputation could change into, ‘It’s a great place if you’re American. If you’re not, save yourself the trouble and go somewhere else.’”