Immigration reform needed to avoid ‘H-1B casualties,’ negative business impacts

Business and education leaders are emphasizing an even greater need for immigration reform in the U.S. as highly skilled employees are being lost due to visa restrictions.

Speaking Monday in Washington, D.C., a panel of members from the Council for Global Immigration expressed concerns on the number of “H-1B casualties” — international workers with high-level skillsets who American employers are unable to bring to U.S. worksites, thanks to limitations on the H-1B visa lottery.

According to the Department of Labor, the H-1B program applies to employers seeking to hire nonimmigrant aliens as employees in specialty occupations — requiring the application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and the attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent.

At the height of the tech bubble, hundreds of thousands of H-1B visas were issued, but recent years — and ongoing political wrangling over immigration policy in general — have left more and more potential employees only admissible through a limited number of visas, distributed in an international lottery system.

Denise Rahmani, director of U.S. immigration with software developer Oracle, says her company lost 200 foreign employees on the recent H-1B cap draft.

Rahmani says for one company project, out of a team of five, three are international and all three were not able to get visas in the most recent lottery. While two have another shot at the lottery, for one, his time is up.

“I need the brightest kids out there,” she says. “We’re losing a well-educated bright young mind because he lost the lottery, he lost at a game.”

Also see: Immigration expert welcomes recruiting changes with new reform

Echoing Oracle’s dilemma, Margie Jones, American immigration manager at Intel Corporation, noted the loss of their go-to expert on analog design. He’ll be moved 12 time zones away, causing havoc on internal communication when problems arise. “Unless we can get some reform, this just looks very unmanageable for business,” she says. 

Laura Chaplin Prince, senior immigration specialist at the University of Iowa, noted that while taxpayers are investing in higher education, they’re also paying to educate people that are forced to leave the U.S. due to immigration rules, rather than establishing their careers here. “It’s a revolving door,” she says. “Our business can’t grow.”  

Meanwhile the U.S. is losing its “country of choice” status for immigration, said Austin Fragomen, chairman of the Council for Global Immigration, reiterating Prince’s concerns. “We’re forcing graduates of U.S. universities to leave and make careers abroad,” he says.

The Council continues to analyze legislation and meet with lawmakers to express support or concern with current legislation.