Immigration Bill Could Change How Silicon Valley Sources Foreign Talent

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The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2019, which eliminates per-country caps on green cards. Under current U.S. law, each country is limited to seven percent of all green cards for foreign workers. For example, if the total number of green cards issued to foreign workers for a fiscal year was 100,000, workers from a particular country like India could only receive 7,000 of them.

The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act kills that notion. Conceptually, it’s designed to allow talented professionals to secure visas regardless of where they’re from. By removing per-country restrictions, it’s easy to see how Silicon Valley, which leans on immigration programs extensively to secure talent from India, would benefit by securing even more foreign-born talent.

Richard Burke, CEO of Envoy Global, which specializes in making the immigration and visa process smooth for companies, tells Dice: “Our customers are happy to see bi-partisan recognition and support for legislation attempting to modernize our immigration system, as they have long said they want to reduce the long wait times that foreign national talent from certain countries face. Against a backdrop of policy memos and increased government scrutiny, employers expect their foreign national headcount to increase or stay the same versus decrease in 2019.”

Peggy Smith, CEO of Worldwide ERC, adds: “Immigration policies that promote global employee mobility help employers build a solid workforce. So we’re encouraged by the passage of the High-Skilled Immigration Act: it offers employers more flexibility when deploying talent. It emphasizes skills at a time when we need to solve a deepening skills shortage. And it broadens options as to which of their employees, regardless of their current country, can potentially relocate to the U.S. Facilitating immigration to ease the movement of an entire global workforce is a continuing journey, and this is one of the forward steps along the way.”

A pragmatic view: The Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act still needs to pass the Senate, and be signed into law by President Trump… who has expressed reservations about immigration programs in the past. However, Trump has also said that the United States should accept immigrants on the basis of talent and skills. He’s also suggested that H-1B visas could provide a route to full-on citizenship.

https://insights.dice.com/2019/07/15/immigration-visa-fairness-act-2019/?

Thanks, Trumpty Dumpty, for making it easier for immigrants to take American IT jobs.

In my view there is no talent shortage except in a few areas. The H1-B has always been a scam which serves the purpose of allowing American corporations to save money by hiring cheaper talent.

[House of Roberts]

1. Uh, the House of Representatives passed this.

Trumpty is getting too much help from Pelosi and company on this one.

Corporations used to care about education in THIS country, until they started outsourcing for labor to hire workers educated on someone else's dime.

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2. I know of companies that go directly to Indian colleges to recruit.

They are recruiting college students who have no work experience at all, and bringing them over on H1-B visas.

Meanwhile, in the same city there is a major university and three technical colleges where they don't recruit at all.

Corporations run Congress.

[RainCaster]

3. There is a huge shortage of IT workers in America

... who will work for $35,000 a year after getting a PhD. So that is why they go outside, so that they don't have to pay the prevailing wage.

[mathematic]

4. Ah yes, the unironic 'immigrants are stealing your jobs' routine

Perhaps you can explain why you think a 7k cap on visas for a country of 1B people is something other than racism.

[Igel]

5. It's a cap on a specific type of visa.

And the idea was "diversity". Visas are capped by percentage so that no one country accounts for most of the visa quota.