U.S. Starts Receiving Applications for H1B Visas
"It will be frenzy, because the cap of 65,000 visas is nowhere near high enough to meet demand," said BSA president and CEO Robert Holleyman.
"If you didn't know better, you might think the H1B petition-filing frenzy had something to do with April Fools' Day. But it's no joke," he said.
"There are individual software companies with thousands of unfilled jobs in research, product development, and engineering. Across the economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted that between 2010 and 2020 there will be at least 1.2 million job openings in computing professions that require a bachelor's degree.
But the National Center for Educational Statistics says we're on pace to produce less than half that many graduates," Holleyman said.
"We need a two-pronged solution for this problem, coupling long-term improvements in STEM education with targeted reforms for high-skilled immigration. Ideally, the latter should help fund the former. BSA supports the framework outlined Immigration Innovation Act, known as I-Squared, and we hope Congress will make it an urgent priority," he said.
In a blog post last week, Brad Smith, the general counsel Microsoft said this year, many employers and highly skilled potential workers are facing April 1 with increased anxiety since the U.S. government again expects all the H-1B visas for the upcoming fiscal year to be snatched up in the first week.
"This has significant implications, not just for these workers and their potential employers, but for the broader economy and for job creation here in the U.S.," he wrote.
"This news further underscores the growing STEM talent crisis facing our country. It's a problem that adversely effects every industry all across the U.S .The American economy creates 120,000 new computer-related jobs annually that require a bachelor's degree, but we are currently producing about 51,000 graduates with a degree in computer science each year," Smith wrote.
