Fergie's Tech Blog

H-1B Visa Law Criticized

K. Oanh Ha writes in The Mercury News:

When a Sunnyvale tech company laid off the manager and most of his colleagues in its reliability testing group a year and a half ago, the manager said a few employees were spared -- younger, foreign workers on H-1B visas.

The laid-off manager was infuriated that as an American citizen, he wasn't given priority over the H-1B employees. The H-1B visa program allows employers to hire skilled foreign workers when there's a shortage of available American workers.

As Congress debates nearly doubling the number of highly skilled guest worker visas next year to 115,000, calls are mounting for an overhaul of Department of Labor's Foreign Labor Certification program. Critics have long charged that the foreign-worker program doesn't fulfill its primary mission: protecting American workers. They want stronger laws to preserve American jobs and argue the current system is prone to abuse and fraud.

posted by Fergie @ 4/07/2006 06:24:00 AM