An information technology company in Sterling, Virginia, has agreed to pay $1,683,584 to 343 non-immigrant workers to settle U.S. Labor Department allegations that the company violated the H-1B visa provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

The department’s Wage and Hour Division alleged that GlobalCynex Inc. employees hired under the H-1B program were not paid required wages from March 2005 through March 2007. Wage and Hour Division investigators also alleged that the company charged new H-1B workers training fees ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 that were in violation of the law.

The H-1B visa program permits employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in professional occupations such as computer programmers, engineers, physicians and teachers. H-1B workers must be paid at least the same wage rates as are paid to U.S. workers who perform the same types of work or the prevailing wages in the areas of intended employment.

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From April 1 through April 7, the Vermont Service Center in Saint Albans, VT, will be busy processing new H-1B Specialty Occupation Applications for non-citizen workers employed in the U.S. This year, the cap for H-1B visas will remain at the pre-1997 limit of 65,000 total work visas. Responding to an information technology boom, Congress increased the number of visas to 195,000 for the fiscal years 2001 – 2003 only.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) expects more than 150,000 H-1B applications to be submitted. For the last five years, the skilled foreign worker cap has been exhausted before the fiscal year began. With only 58,200 of the FY2009 quota of 65,000 visas being available to most nationalities, fully qualified applicants face about a 30% chance of their applications being accepted for adjudication.

“Generally, the U.S. economy needs 160,000 to 170,000 skilled foreign workers at times of modest growth; that number jumps to about 200,000 in booming times. During the tech bust of 2002-2003, there were still 130,000 H-1B applications,” notes Robert Loughran, managing shareholder for Houston-based Tindall & Foster, P.C. and national liaison between AILA and the Vermont Service Center. “In today’s marketplace, leading companies are built by attracting top notch talent from across the globe; this is especially true in technology, design work, programming, engineering, and higher education.”

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released today an interim final rule extending the period of Optional Practical Training (OPT) from 12 to 29 months for qualified F-1 non-immigrant students. The extension will be available to F-1 students with a degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics who are employed by businesses enrolled in the E-Verify program.

“This rule will enable businesses to attract and retain highly skilled foreign workers, giving U.S. companies a competitive advantage in the world economy,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “By extending the training period by an additional 17 months to students who are employed by businesses enrolled in E-Verify, we are further ensuring a legal workforce in the U.S. and aiding good corporate citizens.”

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Leaders in business and government say that caps on visas are chasing away workers who are essential to the economic development of California—and the nation.

By Brian Donahue

California is facing a significant shortage of skilled professionals, a problem that many believe will limit the state’s economic growth in the coming decades. Researchers and leaders in the public and private sectors say the demand for knowledge-based employees already exceeds the supply, and that this gap will only widen over time.

The state’s workforce has long had an increasingly high percentage of skilled employees in the areas of math, science, and engineering. California ranks 12th in the nation in the percentage of adults who are college graduates, according to the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), a private, nonprofit research organization. Its businesses have also relied heavily on foreign-born professionals. With these workers, Silicon Valley companies have become global leaders, and California has built a thriving knowledge-based economy that helps to fuel the nation’s overall economic growth.

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Concerns about foreign companies that benefit from a visa program designed to make the U.S. more competitive are taking center stage in Washington, with two senators demanding explanations from overseas users of the system. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) on May 14 sent letters to nine foreign outsourcing companies requesting detailed information on how they use temporary work visas, known as H-1Bs, to bring foreign workers into the U.S.

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Let’s say you’re a big U.S. corporation that employs skilled IT people. Lately, the human resources department has been giving you a headache because…

1. When you post a new job for a position that requires many technical skills you’re getting a lot less candidates than you used to and the ones you do get don’t have the all the specific skills that you need.
2. Because of this glut, you’re having to pay more & more for this kind of worker because of their increasing scarcity. Even worse, you might even have to pay to relocate some people.

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The Durbin-Grassley bill would require all employers to "pledge" they’ve made a good-faith effort to fill positions with American workers before seeking H-1B holders.

It only took one day for the U.S. government to receive enough applications from employers to fill the 65,000 slots that can be allotted in fiscal 2008 to foreign IT workers seeking H-1B visas.

However, if passed, a bipartisan bill introduced this week could make it even tougher for employers to hire H-1B workers in the future.

The H-1B and L-1 Visa Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act of 2007, introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., aims to reform the visa program most commonly used to bring foreign IT professionals into the United States temporarily.

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It’s back. The SKIL bill — which was introduced into the U.S. Senate last year and focused on raising the H-1B visa cap and reforming green card limits — has been reintroduced into the Senate and House of Representatives.

On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., introduced in the House the "Securing Knowledge Innovation and Leadership," or SKIL bill. The legislation is identical to a bill that was reintroduced last week into the Senate by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who also introduced that bill last year during the last congressional session.

The bill features similar proposals that have been part of larger comprehensive immigration reform packages. However, unlike those other bills that also address border security and lower-skill worker issues, the SKIL bill zeroes in on making changes to H-1B and green card caps. H-1B visas are the most common visas used by employers to bring foreign technology workers into the United States for stints lasting up to six years.

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Rohan, originally from India, was working as an analyst for a fortune 50 company in Seattle area on his student visa (he was allowed to work for a year). Like thousands of other he applied for his work visa called H1B via his employer, unfortunately he was not selected by the newly instituted lottery system by INS.

Disclaimer: I know Rohan and I thought this interview will get him exposure in front of potential hiring managers and/or recruiters.

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The CIS reported Last Friday that it reached its cap of 20,000 H1B petitions for beneficiaries who have attained graduate degrees from a US institution on April 30, 2007. Petitions received after 4/30/07 will be rejected unless the beneficiary is exempt from the cap.

Like it did for the standard H1B petitions earlier in April, the CIS reports it will conduct a random lottery for the cases received on April 30th and then return all of the cases which failed to be selected under the process and which are not cap exempt.

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