working off student visas
working off student visas
Date: Thursday, May 01, 2008 2:15 AM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1862 -- 5/01/2008 >>>>>
The following two stories are blatant propaganda pieces, but there is one
tidbit of information in each that's worth noting: notice the way they
recognize that Optional Practical Training is a de facto H-1B visa. These two
quotes tell it all:
'When we go to hire someone, they are typically working off of their
student visas,' Scott said. '[Because of the H-1B scarcity], you
don't know if these individuals that you've hired are going to get a
[visa] and if you're going to be able to continue to employ them
past a particular date in that year.'
Other applicants are still worrying, though. Henry Suelau, a lawyer
with Miles & Stockbridge PC in Baltimore, said his firm submitted
about two dozen applications for clients. Many applicants, such as
Baltimore Aircoil's, work on extended student visas that expire a
year after their college graduation. But the visas they applied for
this month don't become effective until Oct. 1. Workers whose
student visas expire next month may be forced to leave the country
before they learn the status of their application.
I find it more than interesting that these two articles, by two different
authors, writing for two different magazines, had such similar things to
write. Oh well, it's probably just one of those weird coincidences!
What makes Optional Practical training so pernicious is that Americans are
excluded from the entire hiring process. Here's how the process works to leave
Americans out of the hiring game:
* A foreign student at one of our universities is hired by a company. The
student is given authorization to work as an intern either before or right
after graduation by using Optional Practical Training (OPT) program.
* That student can work up to 29 months, in which time his employer can file
for an H-1B visa or a green card. The time limit used to be 12 months until
the DHS recently extended the window to 27 months (see recent newsletters
about OPT). In effect, when the DHS increased the time window, they allowed
far more aliens to work here without having to obtain H-1B visas. It's a
convenient way to get around the H-1B cap, and that's why the OPT extension
acts as a "de facto" H-1B increase. By extending the window the DHS will
create a huge new pool of educated foreign workers waiting for H-1B visas who
will be like airplanes in a holding pattern, at an airport, waiting to land.
* During the time the student is working as an intern with OPT, the employer
never has to look for another worker. American students, and those who
recently graduated that may have several years work experience, are never even
considered because the job position is already filled.
* When the H-1B visa is granted the foreign student on OPT, for all practical
purposes, becomes a permanent employee. The employer never even has to
interview for a new hire. No interviews mean that Americans looking for work
never knew there was a job opening. The OPT gives employers plausible
deniability if they are ever asked if they looked for American workers because
they never actually had an open job position -- they had an INTERNSHIP
instead. Of course employers aren't required to consider Americans for OPT or
H-1B, but at least H-1B regulations state that they should make a "good faith"
effort to look for qualified Americans.
Norm Matloff discussed OPT in a 2006 newsletter called "Comprehensive
Immigration Reform Act Of 2006".
For the last 5-10 years, it has been typical in the industry to have
a policy in which it is very difficult for a new graduate to get a
software development job without having had internship/co-op
experience. And if you don't get into a development position at the
beginning, it is quite difficult to get one later. In other words,
internship/co-op experience is crucial to being able to have a
development career.
Moreover, often in internship/co-op positions a bond develops
between the employer and student, making it much easier for the
student to get a permanent job with the employer after graduation.
The situation Matloff and I describe is not theoretical. In the year 2000 Norm
Matloff uncovered a case where this exact scenario played out at a company
called womenconnect.com, who hired a student from Mexico who was attending a
U.S. university. To read about it go here:
http://www.jobdestruction.info/ShameH1B/Library/Matloff/WomenConnect.htm
I helped Matloff to do research that nailed womenconnect. At the time both of
us thought the story would be a smoking gun that would cripple the H-1B
program. Unfortunately the story was ignored by the media so it turned out to
be a dud instead of a smoking gun. We sure tried though!
IMPORTANT: My previous newsletter showed how you can give public comment on
the new DHS Extension to 29 months.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2008/04/28/story2.html?b=1209355200^1625371
Visa shortage hurting Georgia businesses
By Urvaksh Karkaria
The Atlanta Business Chronicle, April 28, 2008
Corporate America's competitiveness is under attack -- not from Chinese
sweatshop labor, but from Uncle Sam's chokehold on the skilled labor
supply.
The quota of 65,000 H-1B visas for fiscal 2009 was filled almost
immediately earlier this month after the government got swamped with nearly
163,000 applications for the permits, which allow companies to hire highly
trained foreign workers in the U.S. for up to six years.
An additional quota of 20,000 H-1B visas for foreign students who had
earned an advanced degree from a U.S. university was also maxed out.
This anemic supply of work permits, coupled with a shallow labor pool of
Americans with advanced degrees in math and science, hurts U.S.
competitiveness in a global economy and is accelerating the shift of
domestic jobs overseas, experts said.
Under the present H-1B process, where visa applications are randomly
selected by computer, 'employers are playing the lottery with respect to
their ability to compete in the world marketplace,' said Deborah Marlowe,
who co-manages Paul Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP's global immigration
practice.
Every year hundreds of Georgia companies begin the process of applying for
H-1B visas. Georgia firms filed more than 2,000 Labor Condition
Applications (LCAs) for fiscal 2007. The largest share of LCAs, which are
used by an employer as supporting evidence for the petition for an H-1B
visa, were filed by firms in Atlanta. Georgia employers were looking for
more than techies -- computer programmers and systems analysts. LCAs were
filed for physical therapists, marketing executives and teachers.
A shortage of H-1B visas impacts recruiting efforts, said Kim Scott, human
resources director at Atlanta-based Golder Associates Inc., an engineering
firm that employs about 20 workers on H-1B visas.
'When we go to hire someone, they are typically working off of their
student visas,' Scott said. '[Because of the H-1B scarcity], you don't know
if these individuals that you've hired are going to get a [visa] and if
you're going to be able to continue to employ them past a particular date
in that year.'
Escalating demand
On April 2 -- the second day H-1B applications were accepted by the
government -- 19 tractor-trailers and three aircraft stuffed with work visa
applications rolled up at processing centers, according to Charles Kuck,
managing partner at Atlanta immigration law firm Kuck Casablanca & Odom
LLC.
The number of Georgia corporate clients seeking H-1B visas has nearly
doubled in the past two years, Paul Hastings' Marlowe said.
The surging demand for H-1B visas is symptomatic of an education system
that has failed to churn out sufficient numbers of American graduates with
advanced degrees in science, math, engineering and technology fields.
'We have a mining engineering company client that just cannot find these
highly educated (Ph.D. level) mining engineers that are Americans,' said
Robert Johnson, partner at Atlanta-based Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak &
Stewart P.C.
Besides easing the skilled labor shortage, the H-1B visa program equips
U.S. firms with international knowledge, allowing them to more effectively
compete globally, said Jim Su, a Golder Associates engineer and Chinese
native who is on an H-1B visa.
For many employers, going the H-1B route is a last resort. The process can
drag on for months and cost a company up to $5,000, including more than
$2,000 in application and processing fees.
The shortage of visas can make staffing a challenge, said Monte Dixon,
human resources manager at Mycom North America Inc., a Roswell
telecommunications company that employs about 70 workers on H-1Bs.
Sometimes, 'we're scrambling to get enough people to be able to work on a
particular project for our clients,' Dixon said.
Because of the inordinate competition for work visas, Mycom hopes to reduce
its reliance on H-1B workers.
'We, in the U.S., need to do a better job of preparing people here with the
necessary skill sets,' Dixon said, 'so that we won't have to look outside
the U.S. so much for these skill sets.'
Brain drain
Unable to fill high-skilled jobs domestically or import workers from
overseas, many companies have said they'll offshore work -- and jobs -- to
where the talent is.
At least three major corporate clients with large Georgia operations,
Marlowe said, have suggested they could outsource jobs, mainly to India,
because of an inability to fill highly skilled jobs in the United Sates.
In 2007 Microsoft Corp. opened an office in Vancouver staffed with foreign
workers for whom the software giant could not get H-1B visas. Those workers
would have lived and worked in the United States, paid taxes and supported
local economies.
'American companies, particularly publicly traded firms, are not answerable
to the common man ... [but] to shareholders,' Kuck said. 'Their job is to
make money. And if they can't make it here, they're going to go someplace
else to make it.'
While the United States turns its back on highly skilled foreign workers,
other countries are tweaking their laws to embrace them.
The United Kingdom has launched a program that allows foreign graduates in
certain fields to move to, and work in, the country for six years even if
they don't have a job to begin with.
The European Union, meanwhile, has proposed a 'blue card,' which would be
easier to obtain than the H-1B visa.
Washington ought to tie the supply of H-1Bs to the unemployment rate, Kuck
suggested. When the unemployment rate goes up, the number of visas
available can be decreased.
'This is not rocket science,' Kuck said. 'We are not building a rocket to
Mars, we are making a strategic immigration policy that's good for
America.'
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://baltimore.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2008/04/28/story4.html?b=1209355200%5E1625257
Lottery keeps visa applicants in dark
By Scott Dance
The Baltimore Business Journal (MD), April 28, 2008
Many local companies are left crossing their fingers as they literally play
the lottery for permission to hire foreign workers.
About 163,000 applications were filed with the U.S. immigration office
earlier this month for one of 85,000 visas that allow non-citizens to work
in high-tech jobs. Most companies are still waiting to learn the status of
their requests.
Meanwhile, many are in a tough spot with workers who may be forced to leave
the country before they get word on their applications.
The worries have become almost an annual ritual for companies who say they
can't find enough skilled workers in the U.S. and must turn to foreign
workers -- either bringing them here or setting up operations overseas --
instead. Many argue the cap on the visas should be raised or abolished
because the economy has become so global in nature.
'I see a trend for people moving certain knowledge jobs overseas,' said
Mary Ryan, an immigration lawyer with Baltimore firm Taylor and Ryan LLC.
'If they can't get the worker here, they're going to look elsewhere.'
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office was inundated with
petitions for the visas, called H-1B visas, in the first five days of the
filing period from April 1-7. There was an almost 10 percent increase in
requests compared to the previous year. The immigration office conducted
two lotteries to award the visas on April 14 -- one for 20,000 visas set
aside for those with master's or other advanced degrees, and another for
65,000 available for all other applicants.
Applicants are now waiting to hear by June 2 whether they were approved.
Baltimore Aircoil, a manufacturer of industrial heating and cooling systems
in Jessup, applied for a visa for one worker it hired a year ago as a
recent college graduate, human resources director Marion Thompson said. It
paid $1,000 extra, on top of the $2,320 for the application, to get
expedited notification, and learned April 22 its application was approved.
'We seem to have come out of this OK,' Thompson said. 'It would have been
awful if we had to let him go.'
Other applicants are still worrying, though. Henry Suelau, a lawyer with
Miles & Stockbridge PC in Baltimore, said his firm submitted about two
dozen applications for clients. Many applicants, such as Baltimore
Aircoil's, work on extended student visas that expire a year after their
college graduation. But the visas they applied for this month don't become
effective until Oct. 1. Workers whose student visas expire next month may
be forced to leave the country before they learn the status of their
application.
Three-fourths of Suelau's clients' applications were approved last year.
'We're keeping our fingers crossed this year,' he said.
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