Tech Companies Want More H1B Visas Issued

    The article in question is: "Immigration barriers are forcing U.S. companies to outsource and relocate employees"--Yahoo Finance. It relates complaints from U.S. companies about not getting more H1B visa workers to help drive down wages. So, according to the article, these companies are having to either outsource work to third world countries or relocate facilities overseas. Although the article indicates that a tight labor market is contributing to demand for more H1B visas being issued, it also indicates:

    The H-1B visa is a temporary non-immigrant work visa often filed by large tech companies. It provides less flexibility for an employee, who cannot switch jobs unless another employer files for an H-1B petition within 60 days of the employee leaving their current job.

    The recent tech layoffs that have swept through Silicon Valley have left many H-1B holders scrambling to look for a new job within two months or leave the country. In fact, 51% of companies laid off foreign national employees in 2022, according to the Envoy Global report.

And the article also bemoans the limitations on issuing green cards to foreign workers:

Green cards, which allow immigrants to stay in the U.S. and work permanently, are similarly capped. And because of demand, certain foreign nationals, particularly those from India and China, have to wait up to 10-15 years for approval.

The article also relates:

    To retain talent in the already strained labor market, some U.S. companies have begun relocating their foreign employees to countries with more lenient immigration systems.

    And it's not just tech companies: Finance, manufacturing, insurance, and consulting are a few examples of industries that have offshored their foreign workers, according to Burke. The go-to destination is Canada, followed by Mexico and the United Kingdom.

What's ironic about this supposed demand for foreign STEM workers is that Indian programmers can't actually program:

    Talent shortage is acute in the IT and data science ecosystem in India with a survey claiming that 95 per cent of engineers in the country are not fit to take up software development jobs.

    According to a study by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds, only 4.77 per cent candidates can write the correct logic for a programme — a minimum requirement for any programming job.

    Over 36,000 engineering students form IT related branches of over 500 colleges took Automata — a Machine Learning based assessment of software development skills — and over 2/3 could not even write code that compiles.

    The study further noted that while more than 60 per cent candidates cannot even write code that compiles, only 1.4 per cent can write functionally correct and efficient code.