U.S. gets 236,000 H-1B petitions, a new record

[OhioChick]

On-going demand for visas won’t change the well-worn debate

Apr 12, 2016 6:32 PM PT

The U.S. received 236,000 H-1B petitions for 85,000 visas available under the program's visa caps, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said Tuesday.

The visas are being distributed via a lottery, which means only about one in every three petitions will be approved.

The U.S. received 233,000 H-1B visa petitions last year, the previous record. The U.S. accepts visas on April 1 for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

If history is any guide, a majority of the demand for the visa is coming from IT services, offshore outsourcing firms.

More: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3055028/it-careers/us-gets-236000-h-1b-petitions-a-new-record.html

[Human101948]

1. See! There's no truth to the charge of corporations sending jobs overseas!

You just bring the low wage workers to the USA!

[Baobab]

3. Companies in least developing countries seem to be gearing

up for a big increase in intra-corporate job transfer which will be legal under pending trade deals.

[exboyfil]

2. To give an idea of how many jobs this is

2013-2014 total engineering B.S. grads including computer science is about 100,000. About 13,000 are computer science.

https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/14_11-47.pdf

So in other words we are getting about a significant portion of the total new engineers from foreign H-1B students.

This while we are getting slammed by not having enough good paying jobs available for our young people.

My future SIL is currently looking for a mechanical engineering job in the area. He has a 3.0 and is a May grad.

This has been going on for years. Our country is so bright that we actually charge more tuition for engineering graduates at many of our state schools (including here in Iowa).

https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/14_11-47.pdf

Here is a great report showing break down on H1-B Visas. In a sense the H1-B policy is a reflection of our foreign policy. We need to maintain India as an ally. One way we do that is to allow large numbers of H1-Bs into our country from India.

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/H-1B/h1b-fy-12-characteristics.pdf

[Baobab]

4. Many of the "facts" being cited by advocates of the guest worker visa programs are wrong!

H1-B workers are actually one of the better programs compared to the L-1

Daniel Costa and Ron Hira of EPI.org have done a lot of research on this and they have concluded its basically corporate greed driving too much of these programs. its complex but we need to keep one thing in mind- Both we and the guest workers are often both being victimized- the problems are caused by the huge wage differential- The lure of skilled, very low wage workers is strong.

And wrong.