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FY2008 H-1B Visa Cap Reached On Day 1
Aaman Lamba
The United States Immigration Service (USCIS) announced that the H-1B visa cap for 2008 was reached(PDF) almost immediately on day 1 of the opening of the application process. As announced earlier, a lottery or random selection process will be used to select from all the applications received on April 2 and April 3, in effect turning the H1-B selection process into a crap shoot from a merit-cum-value application process. The H-1B visa cap had remained at 65000+ visas, plus a few exemptions, despite calls from mostly US and Indian IT firms to raise the quota.
The hard reality of the flat world is that despite mobility of capital and information, labour and people are still subject to borders and policies and little men in suits. This makes it a somewhat moot point to plan strategic initiatives spanning the globe and envision global supply chains without assuming that it would be necessary to account for local complexities and quirks. When the local quirks in question are those of the fountainhead of global capitalism, that is, the United States, the impact is far-reaching.
Resource providers such as technology firms are caught in a double bind. They need to have a growing onsite presence of short-term deputized employees to beat the cost traps of local hires and permanent residents, on the one hand, and on the other, the promise of onsite, and specifically United States travel, has for long been a carrot that trumps many others in the frenetic hiring race. By not being able to assure more employees of their notional ticket to paradise, or in this case, Detroit, local salaries are raised, promotions and other margin-affecting sops doled out.
From a U.S. perspective, to succeed at the offshoring/outsouring paradigm, companies need to be able to hand off managerial oversight on the work to the service providers. Without specialized/qualified people to man the onsite decks, these outsourced projects can take a longer time to become productive, and rely more on internal company resources, defeating the productivity benefits of the outsourcing process. On another front, the product and research companies lose out on highly-skilled foreign-educated professionals who find the H-1B visa an easy way of making their skills available to them. Since information and expertise must be utilized or suffer obsolescence, these 'foreign' experts might join European firms, thereby giving them a boost over the U.S. ones.
In a globalized world, these imbalances should be evened out by general progress over the common weal, and by the communications revolution, which makes it easier to deliver expertise and services remotely, but the rapid filling of the quota indicates significant unmet demand for these services. Critics of the quota have called it variously a 'government subsidy', a 'body shop filling process', and a way of displacing 'American' workers. In the globalized world, again, no one group has a a 'right' over work, other than that either acquired by effort, or protected by law, special interest, or need.
Ranjit Goswami
URL
April 4, 2007
05:03 AM
Since 2001, there's been lots of debate (and expectedly less actions) on "Movement of Natural Persons (Mode-4) Under GATS. One can see relevant material and presentations here http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/sem_oct04_e/hamid_mamdouh_e.ppt#1 and http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/symp_mov_natur_perso_april02_e.htm. One of my colleague, who's been researching in this area felt in that developing nations are clearly in an advantageous positions with mode 4, but as usual our policy makers don't push enough (do they push ever at all for any rightful causes?) in global forums so that we gain competitive advantages. My limited understanding is all these H-1B visa are differential visa rules, and as per mode-4, all these are wrong.
kela
April 4, 2007
09:34 AM
must be filled up by Chandra's relatives.Most techies are from AP
Bakhtiar
URL
April 5, 2007
12:34 AM
Majority of the members of the US Senate feel that the H1 visas has been improperly used specially by the Indian companies to achieve their commercial goals. A lot of new changes are going to seen very soon So pull up your socks guys!!!!!!
Check out this web
http://www.nostops.org/faq/faq747/index.php?action=recordview&func=view&recordid=36
Chandra
April 5, 2007
04:02 AM
Kela
Are you still in your mom's basement?
kela
April 5, 2007
05:22 AM
i live in a condo overlooking the arabian sea.People look like ants from up here.
kllaun
April 5, 2007
11:22 PM
Several people asserted that large Indian outsourcing firms are flooding the INS with H1-B applications, to have the recipients ready to come from India when there is a project for them. It does sound a bit incredulous, but I would not completely discount them. Is this something that maybe really happening?
AnArch
April 6, 2007
12:02 AM
Yes, they're planning ahead, and keeping the supply chain stocked.
Chandra
April 6, 2007
02:43 AM
Aaman
One of the interesting conclusions from what you have written is also how major supply constraints within India are causing wage bills to go up significantly. These constraints are alos a cause for concern in terms of professionalism of some tech workers.
One future scenario I envisage looking at IT companies growth figures, H-1B numbers and supplies (from technical institutes) is the creation of our own H-1B type program to get talented technical graduates from Pakistan,Iran, Bangladesh,Sri Lanka and may be even China. While these numbers will not tide away the shortage, this would reduce some of the current manpower supply constraints.
Another interesting trend I found in Bangalore was the direct correlation between the reduction of H-1B quotas in 2001-2002 and the simultaneous increase in the purchase of medium sized cars in the same city. While we donot know if X caused Y, it happened almost at the same time.
I think Globalisation is still viewed as not including labor. If that factor of production were to be let lose suddenly, we will all eventually end up in a terrible scenario. Afterall the same arguments you used to push for h-1b quotas can also be used to argue for cheap shop floor labor as well. The political structure is not at all built to accommodate stakeholders who donot vote for you.
rgds
doo - kela
URL
April 24, 2007
08:09 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ399KOoNRA&mode=related&search=
doo - kela
URL
April 24, 2007
08:11 AM
http://www.nostops.org/closure.html
mybodyshopper
URL
May 9, 2007
02:47 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKtnVASZooE
Does anyone have an answer to the bodyshopper issues???
:)
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