US Report to Show that H-1B Holders Outnumber Unemployed Tech Workers
The United States government is pursuing a visa-fraud case against a New Jersey IT company and will submit as evidence a report that will show the number of foreign tech workers using H-1B visas outnumbers the number of unemployed American tech workers.
According to an article on ComputerWorld.com, the government says that "in January of 2009, the total number of workers employed in the information technology occupation under the H-1B program substantially exceeded the 241,000 unemployed U.S. citizen workers within the same occupation."
The U.S. issues 85,000 H-1B visas per year. The visas are awarded to highly-skilled foreign workers usually in the fields of technology or health care. Companies must show that there is not an adequate number of American workers to fill open jobs before requesting H-1B visas.
The H-1B program continually comes under allegations of fraud, and Sens. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have proposed legislation to revamp the program. They successfully added an amendment to the economic stimulus bill that was passed in February restricts banks that utilize TARP money from hiring H-1B workers.
For more information on this story, see ComputerWorld.com.