Now Hear This!

With the April 1, 2009 H-1B visa application process start date just weeks away, reports from the Valley suggest that even though the number of US citizens on unemployment benefits recently hit a new high, high-tech employers will still lineup for H-1B applications seeking to claim an H-1B worker in the upcoming fiscal year.

As has been done in recent years, H-1Bs will be provided to 65,000 people chosen at random from a pool of petitions filed in the first five business days in April, allowing the selected foreigners to begin work at a the US company that filed for them in the fiscal year starting October 1. An additional 20,000 H-1Bs will be provided on behalf of persons excused from the cap under the “advanced degree” (a Master's or higher) exemption.

So in total, 85,000 work visas will be distributed through the program. Not all of these will go to tech and the 85k number is a mere fraction of the total 598,000 national unemployment number.

Although the process allows filing six months in advance of the fiscal year start (April 1 for an October 1 start) and the process allows five business days to fill the maximum 85k slots, odds are enough petitions will be filed by April 3, as the quota has been exhausted in less than 48 hours in recent years.

The only thing fiercer than the competition for these visas is the debate over them. Many say H-1Bs are vital to maintaining leadership and US competitiveness, while many others claim the visas are an attempt to employ lower-cost labor and take jobs away from homegrown workers.

Much of the argument companies that use H-1Bs have made in the past is that there is a shortage of domestic talent and that the US, with its lacking science and math education system, just doesn't produce enough tech talent to fill vital open jobs. Does that argument hold up in an economic situation that with every passing week more and more top-notch, highly educated, workforce-proven professionals are receiving pink slips?

Microsoft seems to think so. In fiscal 2008, the company raked as fifth in terms of H-1B visa usage with 1037 petitions filed, US Citizenship and Immigration Services data shows. The company's January announced 3000 employee layoff has been well publicized. Yet, according to this report, Microsoft plans to continue to seek technical expertise in the US and abroad and believes that the option to hire foreign workers is necessary to protecting and increasing the company's ability to continue providing US workers with jobs.

Meanwhile, a provision in the economic stimulus package limits the hiring of foreign workers by any company receiving government bailout money. TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) is being heavily criticized by the finance community, which it most impacts, and puts strict limits on taxpayer-money recipients that hire highly skilled workers from overseas under the H-1B visa program. Part of TARP requires companies receiving funds to take good faith steps to recruit US workers for a job opening and then offer the job to a US worker over an H-1B worker if they are equally or better qualified at equal or better pay to what the visa worker would require.

While the banks are crying over TARP, claiming it restricts their abilities to get back on their feet, TARP isn't as tough as the original proposal that would have fully prohibited those companies being bailed out from using H-1Bs altogether.