A comprehensive immigration reform Bill has been languishing in Congress since 2013, when it passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin. Now, however, the 2016 presidential race is already under way, and immigration continues to be a hot political potato.
At issue is the program administered by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency, which grants H-1B visas to foreign nationals allowing them to work in the U.S. for a three-year period. By the recent April deadline, applications this year had mushroomed 35% over the prior year to 233,000 for 85,000 available visas.
With the lion’s share of the demand for skilled workers in IT jobs, many applicants flood the market from India, China and other high-tech developing incubator economies. As always with any controversy over labor and jobs, the debate is multi-sided.
The aforementioned 2013 bi-partisan legislation was reintroduced in January with a proposal to increase the annual number of H-1B visas to 195,000. Labor activists and unions fear losing higher-paid veteran employees to less expensive “imports,” and call for more intensive training of available U.S. workers, while corporations and shareholders decry the widening skills gap and shortage of qualified professionals to fill the jobs stateside.
The situation is getting serious enough that companies like Microsoft are starting to move IT jobs to places like Hong Kong and Vancouver, where they don’t have to compete for visas. The only thing interested parties from Silicon Valley to Washington, DC can agree on is that the visa system is outdated and in need of an overhaul.