Thread: Wall Street Journal pleads to abolish H-1B visa limit

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Wall Street Journal pleads to abolish H-1B visa limit
Saturday August 27 2005 00:00 IST
PTI

WASHINGTON: The cap on H-1B visas, which have benefited Indian and other skilled foreign workers to find employment in the United States, should be abolished altogether, a leading US Financial daily said on Friday.

"Political pressure for an immigration crackdown seems to be building, with allegedly serious people even debating a 2,000-mile wall along the US-Mexican border. Meanwhile, in the us economy, the demand for foreign workers continues," The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial.

Each year the us issues a set number of H-1B visas to educated foreign professionals with specialised skills. Earlier this month, the department of homeland security announced that the annual H-1B cap of 65,000 already has been reached for next year (2006).

What this means, the paper noted, is that any number of fields dependent on high-skilled labour could be facing shortages -- science, medicine, engineering, computer programming. It also means tens of thousands of foreigners -- who graduated from US universities and applied for the visas to stay here and work for US firms -- will be shipped home to start companies or work for America's global competitors.

Congress sets the H-1B cap and could lift it as it has done in the past for short periods. Typically, however, that is a years-long political process and cold comfort to companies that in the near term may be forced to look outside the us to hire, the journal said.

"Rather than trying to guess the number of foreign workers the us economy needs year-to-year," the paper said, "Congress would be better off removing the cap altogether and letting the market decide."

Contrary to the assumptions of opponents of immigration, the size of America's foreign workforce is mainly determined by supply and demand, not "Benedict Arnold CEOs" (Benedict Arnold defected to the British during the American War of Independence) or a corporate quest for "cheap labour", the journal said.

"Let us not forget," said the journal, "that these immigrant professionals create jobs, as the founders of Intel, Google, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Computer Associates, Yahoo and numerous other successful ventures."

"The public policy institute of California did a survey of immigrants in silicon valley in 2002 and found that 52 per cent of 'foreign-born scientists and engineers have been involved in founding or running a start-up company either full-time or part-time.'"

Moreover, the notion that Indian software writers are being hired by Microsoft at bargain-basement costs and driving down the wages of Americans is also refuted by evidence, the paper pointed out. A federal reserve bank of Atlanta study conducted in 2003 found no negative impact on US wages.

Government fees and related expenses for hiring foreign nationals can exceed USD 6,000, and additional fees accrue if and when the H-1B status is renewed after three years.

"A central irony here," said the editorial, "is that opponents of lifting the H-1B cap also tend to be the biggest critics of outsourcing, which is fuelled by the arbitrary cap.

"But the H-1B debate also exposes those who are giving lip service to immigration 'reform' while doing nothing to fix the problem because they would rather exploit it for political purposes. American companies don’t have that luxury. They operate in the real world," the paper said.

The cap on H-1B visas, which have benefited Indian and other skilled foreign workers to find employment in the United States, should be abolished altogether, a leading US Financial daily said on Friday.

Along with all other immigration laws as well, if you've followed the Journal's position on this.