FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 23, 2009
Contact: Eric Thomas or Frances Cox, The Fratelli Group, 202-822-9491
Drop in Demand for H-1Bs Provides Support for Market-Based Approach to Allocating Visas for Highly Educated Foreign-Born Talent
Washington, D.C. – Compete America today issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announcement that the Fiscal Year 2010 65,000 H-1B cap was reached earlier this week.
“When the economy was strong a few years ago, the H-1B cap was reached on or within days of the April 1 opening of the petition filing period. This year’s weaker economy created an eight-month lag in hitting the cap. Yet even with the extremely reduced demand for H-1Bs, the effect of the arbitrary and outdated cap is that an employer in need of a key innovator after this week will still have to wait nine months. The point here is one Compete America has long made: the market will dictate demand, and we should let it.
“U.S. employers will always need access to the talented and knowledgeable professionals who have built and will continue to grow our innovation economy. Certainly, our first priority must be to meet that need by expanding the math, science and technology education and training pipeline for American students and workers. But until that happens, U.S. employers must be able to complement that search by recruiting foreign nationals, especially the best and brightest from U.S. colleges and universities. The U.S. economy is made stronger and more competitive by an immigration policy that permits U.S. companies to invest in the top talent from the United States and abroad to innovate and create jobs in America.”
In addition to replacing the current inflexible and arbitrary statutory cap on H-1B visas with a market-based system, Compete America has long advocated for remedying backlogs in the employment-based green card program and streamlining the path to a green card for foreign students graduating from U.S. universities.
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Compete America (www.competeamerica.org) is a coalition of corporations, educators, research institutions and trade associations concerned about legal, employment-based immigration and committed to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated workforce necessary to ensure continued innovation, job creation and leadership in a worldwide economy.
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