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Solving the H-1B Visa Issue

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One of the big topics that came up on the panel I was on today at the DNC was the issue surrounding the labor supply in the US in computer science and IT.  There is a growing shortage of software engineers in the US that is getting worse as every year passes.  I’ve talked about this in the past as my main motivation for being involved in the National Center for Women & Information Technology as one of the ways to build the long term labor pipeline is to encourage more women and girls to get involved in careers in computer science and IT.

I think the Bush administration has completely missed the boat when it comes to dealing with temporary work visas and permanent residency for high tech software / IT workers.  This issue has come up repeatedly over the past few years as large software and technology companies have finally weighed in to try to impact some of our inane policies.

I think the solution to the problem is really simple.  The US should grant permanent residency to anyone who graduates from a qualified four year university with a computer science degree.  If you are concerned about people gaming the system, you can start out by limiting it to people that receive a post-graduate degree.  Of course, you can easily extend this beyond computer science (e.g. physics, chemistry, etc.)

When I was an undergraduate at MIT, a meaningful percentage of the student body was from other countries.  It never even occurred to me that these folks were "different" and didn’t "belong in our country."  Some of my best friends in college weren’t US citizens and I was baffled by the hoops they had to jump through even back then to work in the US.  In the past eight years, this has gotten dramatically worse and it’s time we got in front of this.

Everyone on the panel seemed to agree that this was a huge issue surrounding innovation in the US over the long term.  Most people seemed to agree that this was a simple solution that would not require a huge bureaucracy to administer.  With your diploma, you get permanent residence status. 

I don’t understand why there would be any rational resistance to something like this – after all, wasn’t the United States built on immigrants?

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August 26th, 2008     Categories: Politics    
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  • Alex Iskold

    Amen

  • ZPH

    Not enough American IT workers? That depends on your perspective. I like to use a car mechanic analogy:

    "Joe" is an American in his 40's and has been a Lexus mechanic for 20+ years. "Boris" is from another country, in his early twenties and just got a certificate from a 6-month program to be an Infiniti mechanic.

    Joe is laid off and applies to a nearby Infiniti dealership, but he won't get the job. The real reason? Because Joe would demand too much money. The stated reason? Joe's "not qualified". So the Infiniti dealership contracts with an outsourcer who brings in Boris. After all, Boris has the official Infiniti certificate, so he's more qualified.

    This is absurd. There are lots of unemployed American IT workers who would be more than capable of filling many of the open positions out there, but because the employers play ticky-tack with the job description, they can disqualify a lot of Americans and bring in a cheap hired gun from overseas under the guise that there were no "qualified" American workers.

  • ITGuru

    I suppose the problem I have with this is that we will largely be rewarding mediocrity. There is a big differential between being competent enough to earn a degree and being competent. Giving residency to anyone who completes a 4 year degree rather than bringing forth better quality candidates we will be diluting a fairly thin talent pool as it is with a large number of C- graduates. The fact is a lot of the fairly “low-skill” work (billing systems, hr systems, db admins, report writers, simple web apps) we used to import H1-B people to do is now being out-sourced entirely overseas. That has actually freed up a fair number of what I would classify as semi-skilled IT resources. The signal-to-noise ratio is already pretty bad, this would make it worse. My experience is that the real shortage has been in talent, not resumes. Don't think this proposal will help there.

  • JaipalJeph

    Dear friends,

    I just got a waiver approvel.Thankyou so much for your co-operation.
    As you knowreason behing getting waiver was filing H-1 papers.
    But i need proper assistance from your end.

    I have couple of queries regarding my H-1 papers filing.

    As you already know that i got a waiver. And now my company is ready to sponsor me for H-1.

    As far as i know if i have to file papers for H-1 ,i can file it in April and it(H-1) will be activated in October.

    My internship with this company is finishing in feb 15 2009.I have visa till JULY 31st 2009. I cannot work on that visa after 15th feb because i have my contract with this company till feb 15 th.

    So if i file my papers in april, is there any way i can stay till october to start my H-1 visa. May be i could continue with the same company having some kind of extention till october.

    I mean i need to cover that 6-7 months which is in between feb-april and october.

    Could you please suggest me proper way so that we can get extention till october.And at the same time we can file H-1 visa in april.

    Warm Regards!!!
    Jaipal Jeph

  • http://www.immigrationvisaus.com Immigration1

    Although there is shortage of science and IT workers yet it is not easy to get H1b visa for the applicants.I don't understand then why not they take it seriously and do something.

  • http://broomfieldbugle.blogspot.com/2009/04/unwelcome-guests.html Manoj Joseph

    I agree with you. But I doubt if this is going to become reality in the next few years, unfortunately.

    I have written a blog about the visa issue, if you are interested.
    http://broomfieldbugle.blogspot.com/2009/04/unwel…

    Disclaimer: I am on a non-immigrant visa wondering how coax my employer in to applying for a green card for me.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

    Super post – thanks.  I’m hoping there are enough of us focusing on this that we’ll get a groundswell of support.  Having talked to a few congressmen and heard what is coming with immigration reform proposals, I’m more optimistic than I was a few weeks ago.

  • Oleg

    The lack of technical talent is a myth. There is an oversupply of computer programmers in the US. They myth was invented by the US corporations and executives trying to reduce labor costs and import cheap labor into the US. It has benefited countries like India and China, as wells as thickened wallets of the US executives.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/bfeld Brad Feld

      I completely disagree.  As someone involved in creating hundreds of startup companies over the past 15 years, there has always been more demand for software engineering talent in the US than there is software engineers.  In addition, all of the work that we’ve done at the National Center for Women & Information Technology shows this trend getting worse over the next decade.

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Brad Feld

Hi, I'm Brad Feld, a managing director at Foundry Group who lives in Boulder, Colorado. I invest in software and Internet companies around the US, run marathons and read a lot.

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