Albany Tech Firms Want More H-1Bs

Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 12:45 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

This is another article by the pro H-1B crowd. It contains the usual
lies by immigration lawyers and corporations that they can't function
without a steady flow of H-1Bs. Articles of this type appear every time
there is going to be a vote on raising H-1B limits. Organizations like
the ITAA and NASSCOM carefully orchestrate these media campaigns.

U.S. corporations refuse to admit why they want H-1B, and the media
lap-dogs echo their lies. The only ones that seem to understand how the
cheap labor game is played are the foreigners that are replacing
American workers. Soundarrajan is an Indian native and a graduate
student at the University of Akron. He said that American companies
want H-1Bs because, "They want foreign nationals who will work for a
lot less money than an American would."

Low wages won't discourage Soundarrajan from taking a job here though.
He explained that he'll go wherever he can get a visa .

http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2003/04/28/story2.html

>From the April 25, 2003 print edition

Visa crackdown may keep tech firms from hiring qualified workers

Richard A. D'Errico The Business Review

If Congress doesn't act this year to raise the cap on business visas,
there could be an international bottleneck--not enough visas to allow
companies to hire qualified foreign nationals.

"That's bad," said Prabhu Soundarrajan, a native of India and a
graduate student at the University of Akron who is looking for a job in
the Albany area. "That's really bad."

And the Capital Region, which has an increasingly international work
force, would stand to lose a great deal, say local immigration lawyers.

In 1986, Congress capped the number of H-1B visas--the most common visa
for professional working people--at 65,000. During the last few years,
that cap has continued to climb, said Leslie Thiele, of the Albany law
firm Whiteman Osterman & Hanna. She is head of the international
practice group.

The number was eventually raised to 195,000, the current level.

Raising the cap on H-1B visas was a major priority for the high-tech
industry in 2000, before the tech bubble burst. Industry executives
maintained that they needed to import talent from overseas to fill
engineering jobs and other high-skilled positions.

Soundarrajan said American employers want foreign workers.

"They want foreign nationals who will work for a lot less money than an
American would," he said.

Maria Holmes, vice president of Watervliet-based AutoQuant Imaging
Inc., said she simply can't find Americans to do the work.

Whatever the reason American companies want foreign labor, come October
it could be more difficult. When this fiscal year is over on Sept. 30,
the cap goes back to 65,000, Thiele said.

There is some talk of raising the number again, but Thiele isn't too
hopeful.

"It's being discussed, but given the current anti-immigration attitude
in Congress--in some parts of Congress--and anti-immigration attitudes
of leaders of the relevant committees in Congress, it's going to be a
hard fight."

Anti-immigration attitudes are nothing new in Congress, said Michele
Santucci, immigration legal counsel for Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute as well as local companies.

"You've got an entrenched and tired bureaucracy that for years has been
running their own little shop," Santucci said. "They've been making
their own policy as to whether they are opposed to immigration, which
in general they are."

She said the Immigration and Naturalization Service was allowed to
continue like this for years because typically the Democrats in
Congress are pro-U.S. labor and the Republicans want to limit
immigration.

It's true that the number of H-1B visa applications have dropped off in
recent years. In 2002, the number dropped to 197, 537, down from
331,206 the previous year.

But that's still a far cry more than the 65,000 cap that could go in
place at the end of this year.

That could hurt the Capital Region.

"At a time when we are having increased foreign investments in this
area and increased need for foreign workers," Thiele said, "we're not
going to be able to get them because of the cap."

In Soundarrajan's case, he'll go where he can get a visa, even though
he prefers Albany to anywhere else in the country.

"The visa is the most important thing," he said.

rderrico@bizjournals.com | 518-640-6807

) 2003 American City Business Journals Inc.

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