Thread: WSJ: Slump Sinks Visa Program

October 29, 2009

Slump Sinks Visa Program
By MIRIAM JORDAN

A coveted visa program that feeds skilled workers to top-tier U.S. technology companies and universities is on track to leave thousands of spots unfilled for the first time since 2003, a sign of how the weak economy has eroded employment even among highly trained professionals.

The program, known as H-1B, has been a mainstay of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, where many companies have come to depend on securing visas for computer programmers from India or engineers from China. Last year, even as the recession began to bite, employers snapped up the 65,000 visas available in just one day. This year, however, as of Sept. 25 -- nearly six months after the U.S. government began accepting applications -- only 46,700 petitions had been filed.


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Zuma Press
Engineers Anna Li, left, and Jason Schlosser look over data in a lab in San Diego. Ms. Li is from Singapore and has been in the U.S. for five years on an H1-B visa.


In addition to the weak economy, companies have curbed applications in the face of anti-immigrant sentiment in Washington and rising costs associated with hiring foreign-born workers.

Usually, all visas are allocated within a month or two from April, when applications for the following fiscal year are first accepted. But this year, six months later, "you can still walk in with an application and you're still highly likely to get approved," said R. Srikrishna, senior vice president for business operations in North America for HCL Technologies Ltd., an Indian outsourcing company.

The sagging economy, which has pushed U.S. unemployment to 9.8%, has crimped expansion in the technology sector, traditionally the biggest user of the H-1B program. Julie Pearl, a corporate immigration lawyer in San Francisco, said that at least a third of her clients have cut their hiring of H-1B visa holders in half from a year ago.

"Most companies just aren't hiring as many people in general," Ms. Pearl said.

For Indian outsourcing companies, historically the largest recipients of H-1B visas, the economy as well as political pressures have prompted a cutback in applications. The recession has trimmed technology budgets at their U.S. clients; at the same time, Washington has scrutinized hiring from abroad more closely amid high unemployment at home.

Instead of bringing over Indian engineers, HCL has been hiring American employees who otherwise might have been let go by clients switching the work to HCL, Mr. Srikrishna said. Last year, HCL hired more than 1,000 employees from clients and received just 87 H-1B visas, he said.


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“ Its time to put an end to this ridiculous program. â€

Hire American Engineers and Computer Programmers. It's a disgrace for our companies to go to India hunting for computer programmers and China for engineers. Hire Americans for these jobs. There has been a decline in the engineering quality of our products, now we know why. What are you employers thinking? Are you thinking "I want to be stupid?"