 H-1B CAP NOT EXPECTED TO BE HIT THIS YEAR
Last fall, under tremendous pressure from business, particularly high-tech firms, Congress raised the annual limit on H-1B visas from 115,000 to 195,000. According to industry, without the increase, they would face significant worker shortages. Just six months later, however, the dire predictions are not coming true. Indeed, there is every indication that the number of H-1B visas sought this year will not even be 115,000. INS spokesperson Eyleen Schmidt has said that current numbers are “nowhere near” the 115,000 mark.
Over the past few months, the overall economy has entered a downturn, driven in large part by the failure of many dot-com companies, lower than expected profits in the tech sector, and substantial cuts in the tech industry workforce. Some of the leading firms in the industry, such as Cisco Systems, Inc., Intel Corp., and Nortel Networks, Inc., which are some of the largest employers of H-1B workers, have announced substantial layoffs and general hiring freezes.
While a number of workers in the US on H-1B visas have been laid off, experts do not expect that they will be hard hit by the early round of layoffs. According to Thom Stohler, director of workforce policy for the American Electronics Association, the first employees to be laid off in such situations are administrators and contractors, not skilled workers. He believes that there will not be large numbers of layoffs of H-1B workers unless some of the larger employers go out of business.
Industry experts say that there is another significant reason for the perceived drop in H-1B demand. Harris Miller, the president of the Information Technology Association of America, says that because of pressure from the annual cap, in past years employers filed visa applications early in the fiscal year. With the increased cap, he says that employers are not so worried, and are therefore filing at a more reasonable pace.
However, the increased availability of US workers that results because of the layoffs does mean that those employers who are still hiring do not have to look overseas. This, plus the general slowdown in the economy, likely means we won’t see the cap on H-1B visas reached this year, as it has been in the past few years.
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