Employers apply for fewer skilled guest-worker visas

U.S. employers have applied for guest-worker visas that would allow 62,000 new foreign professionals to get jobs in offices, labs, public schools and hospitals beginning this year.

It's but a fraction of the total number of so-called H-1B visas that employers — mostly in the technology industry — have sought in each of the past few years, due in part to the economic crisis and growing animosity toward holders of such visas.

But, for some U.S. workers who have lost their jobs in recent months, that's still 62,000 jobs too many.

"What upsets me is that many of these are jobs that deliberately bypass Americans," said one laid-off Microsoft worker who asked that her name not be used. "We never even had a chance to apply for them."

Citizenship and Immigration Services each year makes 85,000 H-1B visas available to foreign professionals with at least a bachelor's degree or equivalent — including 20,000 for those with advanced degrees from U.S. colleges and universities.

Employers who file visa petitions on behalf of the foreign professionals they recruit don't have to prove there are no U.S. workers available for the jobs.

And applications for workers in the high-tech and health-care industries have poured in during recent years.

In fact, in the previous two years, the government received so many applications on the first day it began accepting them that it cut the application period short and held a lottery to distribute the visas already applied for.

This year, the government began accepting employers' petitions for the visas on April 1 and by last week had received 42,000 applications for the 65,000 bachelor-level visas. The limit for the advanced-degree visas already had been reached.

By contrast, employers last year had applied for nearly triple the number of available visas within the first two days.

"While not as brisk as in past years, there's interest in these visas," said Sharon Rummery, spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Services. Her department will continue to accept applications until the number reaches the Congress-mandated cap.

Attorneys had predicted that, given the state of the economy, fewer applications for H-1B visas would be received this year.

Employers that get federal bailout funds now are required to state, not prove, they have attempted to find and hire qualified U.S. workers and that employment of an H-1B worker would not displace U.S. workers.

Microsoft, one of the largest H-1B employers, said it was applying for "substantially fewer" foreign workers this year, but instead was using the H-1B program to extend the stay of existing guest workers, such as those on the lesser-known L-visas.

About 10 percent of Microsoft's U.S. work force are H-1B visa holders.

Steve Miller, a Seattle-based immigration attorney, said employers — particularly small and medium-sized ones — are being cautious, given the cost of hiring H-1B workers.

In addition to visa fees and attorney costs, employers are required to pay H-1B workers the prevailing wage. Set by the government, that wage lags the market. Real wages have been pushed down by the recession.

"They're stuck with data from the good years," Miller said. "Employers have to really want an H-1B candidate to be locked into a salary that is so much above where the market is right now."

He said a larger portion of H-1B candidates this year involves foreign professionals with advanced, rather than four-year, degrees. "Because of the downturn in the economy," he said, "the positions that remain still somewhat in need tend to be the very high-end, very top positions."

None of that, however, appeases Donna Conroy, director of a Chicago-based group called Bright Future Jobs, which wants to restrict the corporate visa program.

Conroy is working with members of Congress on legislation that would give U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents first crack at jobs that go to H-1B candidates.

"The biggest misconception that the American public has embraced is that employers have to seek local talent first," she said. "We want to create an opportunity so that U.S. workers can at least compete for these jobs."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com