As U.S. employers start applying today for visas for foreign workers, the hiring of talent from other countries is facing heightened scrutiny and the threat of greater restrictions as domestic unemployment soars.
In recent years, the annual competition for 85,000 temporary work visas awarded to foreign computer technicians, engineers, university educators and other highly skilled professionals has drawn twice as many applications as spots available.
But this year immigration attorneys are predicting that the recession will result in fewer applications, while critics of the visa program are vowing a renewed push to regulate it more closely.
In February, President Obama signed off on a stimulus package that explicitly requires recipients of bailout funds to hire Americans over foreigners with the special visas, known as H-1Bs. Legislation that would impose similar restrictions on all employers is expected to be introduced in Congress this month.
"It's wrong to bring in H-1B workers if we have [American] workers here, and it's more unconscionable when you have a recession," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who is sponsoring legislation that would require firms seeking visas for foreign workers to make a good-faith effort to recruit Americans first, advertise positions on a Department of Labor website and take other actions.
But employers argue that skilled foreign workers complement rather than replace Americans, that they help create additional jobs and they produce innovations that benefit the U.S. economy.
At Microsoft Corp., for example, 35% of the patent applications the firm filed last year were the result of work by H-1B and green-card holders, according to a blog post Tuesday by the firm's general counsel, Brad Smith.
Other backers of the visa program argue that employers that can't hire the foreign talent they need in the U.S. might simply ship the jobs overseas.
"We totally understand the need to make sure U.S. workers are taken care of, but we want to make sure we don't take away the jobs that H-1B programs have represented in the past," said Robert Hoffman, a vice president of Silicon Valley software firm Oracle Corp. and co-chair of Compete America, a Washington-based network of 100 companies, trade associations and universities.
The H-1B program was established in 1990. The visa, valid for up to six years, requires foreign workers to have a bachelor's degree or equivalent. Employers must pay an H-1B holder on a par with American workers who do the same kind of work.
