Foreign hiring now tougher for US banks
washington/new york — Big banks in the US, which have been seeking to hire more foreign workers in recent years under the H-1B visa programme, are now being forced to reconsider their approach after the Trump administration made it harder to obtain the work permits.
Eight major investment banks increased their H-1B applications for high-skilled workers by almost 60 per cent over five years to more than 7,000 in fiscal year 2017, according to a Bloomberg analysis of visa filing data.
The banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs Group, increasingly have been using a similar approach to hiring as tech companies, which rely most heavily on the visas. To hire foreign workers under the programme, companies compete in a government lottery for a share of the 85,000 permits available annually.
The investment banking and securities industry accounted for only 1.2 per cent of the total H-1B applications approved in fiscal year 2016, the most recent year for which data was available. About two-thirds of the H-1B visa applications filed last year by the eight banks were for technology and engineering employees, the analysis shows.
During the presidential campaign, President Donald Trump said he would end the use of H-1B visas, calling it a “cheap labour programme”, and said companies should hire American workers first. Trump followed through on his comments with an executive order last year to award H-1B visas to the “most skilled and highest-paid” applicants, prompting some banks to take a different approach. The approval rate for applicants who were selected for visa spots in the lottery fell from 92 per cent in August to 82 per cent in November, according to data from US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Some lawmakers have proposed bills to revamp the H-1B visa programme, but Congress hasn’t taken up the issue. Lawmakers have been deadlocked over more pressing immigration issues, including the fate of undocumented children brought to the US by their parents.
Some bank departments are now focusing their hiring on workers who don’t need permits, though they continue to use the visas for positions such as engineers and quantitative analysts that are hard to fill with US workers.
For instance, Barclays in some cases has passed over foreign applicants who need visas in its investment banking units in the US, which previously welcomed them, in part because of concerns they may be forced to leave the country, according to people familiar with the matter. Citigroup has a current job posting for a two-year tech analyst programme that says candidates need to have a US work permit and the bank won’t sponsor a visa.
A lot of companies are opening up their companies in Canada because they can hire these people and we can’t. That’s just silly for America to do that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan
Hiring difficulties
Visa issues are limiting the financial industry’s ability to hire the “cream of the crop”, said Blake Miller, immigration lawyer at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy in Irvine, California. “It’s causing pause and causing companies to be hesitant to hire people that their teams have often found to be very desirable candidates,” said Miller, who represents clients in the financial services industry. “They are having to sometimes just to move on to the next candidate.”
Seema Hingorani, founder of Girls Who Invest, a New Yorkbased nonprofit that helps students get into Wall Street, said on Bloomberg Television that finding a job has become harder for international students. She described the difficulties faced by one.
“She just is not a US citizen and she needs a visa,” she said. “Unfortunately many firms wouldn’t even interview her.”
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s CEO, said the US should welcome highly skilled workers from overseas.
“If you get a degree here at college or an advanced degree, you should have a green card, which is what they do in Canada,” he said last month in Davos, Switzerland. “A lot of companies are opening up their companies in Canada because they can hire these people and we can’t. That’s just silly for America to do that.”
JPMorgan, based in New York, filed more than 2,000 applications for H-1B visas in fiscal year 2017, the highest number among the eight investment banks. That’s still less than half of the number of applications filed by Amazon.com or Microsoft. — Bloomberg