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H-1B visas go abegging

Aseem Chhabra

A year after the US Congress increased the annual quota of H-1B visas for high tech employees from overseas to fuel the booming dotcom industry, there appears to be a sudden drop in the demand for those employees.

As the economy starts to slide south with the dot-coms going bust, and companies announcing hiring freezes or layoffs, there appears to be slowdown in the hiring of workers on the H-1B visa status.

"In general we are no where near the cap for 2001," Eyleen Schmidt, spokesperson for the Immigration and Naturalization Service told rediff.com. Last fall, the US Congress passed a law increasing the cap for H-1B visas to 195,000 for the 2001 fiscal year from prior level of 115,000.

Schmidt speculated that in addition to the apparent slowdown in the economy there could be other causes for the less than anticipated usage of H-1B workers, including the fact that last year the Congress added another dimension to the visas.

The visas for the fiscal year 2000 were all used by March 2000, Schmidt said. So any application that the INS received after March 2000 should have counted towards 2001 quota. But when the Congress raised the visa quota to 195,000, it also said that any application received prior to September 1, 2000 should not count towards 2001 cap.

It is possible, Schmidt said, that a large number of applications that would have counted towards the 195,000 level were separated and they also remained separate from the 115,000 count of 2000. "The INS is still trying to figure how many of those application fell between the 2000 and 2001 caps," she said.

While there appears to be no debate on whether the US economy is slowing down, immigration activists and H-1B visa specialists interviewed by rediff.com, emphasized that it did not necessarily mean that there would be no more hiring of H-1B workers.

In Washington DC, a spokesperson for Cisco System Inc said: "Cisco has regarded and continues to regard H-1B workers as a strategic part of our staffing strategy. H-1B workers by definition have special skills that are in very short supply worldwide. That is still the case."

"Clearly we are not immune to the economic conditions and we are being a lot more careful and selective about hiring overall," he added, while denying that there was a blanket hiring freeze at Cisco. "But you have such a severe shortage for highly qualified tech workers that you still, even with a slowed economy, have a demand for this subset of workers."

Thom Stohler, director of workforce policy for the American Electronics Association, a lobby group representing 3,500 firms also said that the information he had received was that the demand for H-1B workers remained strong.

"Maybe the INS is saying they are not using the numbers but I am not sure," he said. "It would be interesting to see what the numbers are. The feedback I received from companies is that they still need highly skilled workers, so we will wait to see if the numbers are actually going down."

Stohler added that one reason for the apparent low use of H-1B visas could be that last year the Congress raised the US worker training fee attached to each application from $500 to $1,000. The additional $500 per H-1B visa would not affect large corporations like Intel Corp, Nortel Networks and Motorola Inc, he said, but it could impact some of the smaller firms.

However, "I have very rarely heard of H-1Bs being laid off," said Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California,in response to questions sent to him by e-mail. Matloff has actively campaigned against the high tech industry's claims that there is severe shortage of qualified workers in the US.

"It is important to note that the reduction in new visas granted doesn't mean that employers are hiring American citizens and permanent residents instead," Matloff said.

"Moreover, I also surmise that fewer employers than before will even offer to sponsor the H-1Bs for green cards. The number of foreign programmers who wish to work in the US will so exceed the number of new programming jobs that the employers will be able to get away with this."

According to Stohler, layoffs in the current economic situation will depend upon the workers and what they are doing in the company. If a role is critical, then it is possible that the worker may not be affected by the downsizing. On the other hand if the company folds up, then obviously everyone is affected.

Matloff's view that no H-1B workers are being laid off was challenged by Murali Krishna Devarakonda, an activist for the rights of H-1B workers and a member of the board of directors of the non-profit group -- Immigrants' Support Network. Layoffs may not be common right now, Devarakonda said, but there is still a major concern among H-1B workers.

"I don't think a lot of people in established companies are being laid off," he said, adding that layoffs may be more common with dot-com companies which may have closed down and with people who have been working for consulting companies or body shops.

"This is good time to stop and think for pro and anti-immigration people," he said, echoing the views of his group. "Is this the best system that we have? When we need workers we bring them here and when we don't, we lay them off. That maybe be fine for an American citizen or a permanent resident. That person can get a job. And I am not too worried about unemployment insurance. Nobody I can tell you is looking into that. We don't even think like that."

"We (H-1B workers) think more in terms of being legal and getting another job. The number one concern is that 'Oh, I am going to be out of status'."

According to information he has gathered from immigration attorneys, Devarakonda thinks that most laid off H-1B workers have a month to get into some legal status. Otherwise they can be deported back to their home country.

"The system should be reasonable with employees and give them more time, so that they could stay a few months more in the legal status while finding a job," he said. "In this economy to find another job and to have someone sponsor you within a month is impossible. Three months maybe more reasonable. If in three months, I do not find a job, I should pack my bags and leave."

In the US, the Congress makes projections regarding the number of H-1B workers that are needed in a given fiscal year and each of those foreign employees is then tied to his or her employer and to the INS, Devarakonda said.

"So each one of us has an umbilical cord. The moment the employer severs that umbilical we are out of status. We are scrapping for breath. We are dying. The reason for the H-1B is that the employers need high tech workers and they get them from overseas. Then why is it that the system is set up such a way that employee needs the employer in order to remain in legal status?"

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