Report: Most H-1B visas not going to Silicon Valley
The controversial H-1B work visa used heavily by Silicon Valley tech firms to acquire talent is much more widely used by companies based in New York and Texas, according to new research.
From 2010 to 2016, almost a third of the visas, which are intended for workers in jobs requiring specialized knowledge and a bachelor’s degree or higher, went to businesses in the New York City area, the Pew Research Center reported Thursday.
Dallas and Washington, D.C., ranked second and third in numbers of approved H-1B visas, Pew said, basing its findings on government data on 68 metro areas obtained via a public records request. New York City-area companies obtained 247,900 H-1B visas, Dallas region firms received 74,000, and metropolitan D.C. had 64,800.
Trailing with the 10th-highest number of H-1B visas approved was the metropolitan area of San Jose, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale with 22,200. The San Francisco
region, which includes Oakland andHayward, received 11,300 and ranked 13th.
“Demand for the highskilled worker visas has boomed in recent years, and the H-1B program is now the primary way employers in the U. S. hire high- skilled foreign workers,” Pew said.
The data Pew used were not broken down by occupation or industry, making it impossible to draw conclusions specific to the technology industry or its use of H-1Bs in the Bay Area, said Neil Ruiz, associate director for migration research at Pew.
The report simply shows that “There are a lot of other places within the United States that have a demand for high- skilled H-1B foreign workers,” Ruiz said.
The H-1B visa has become a flashpoint in theU.S. immigration debate. Major tech companies have been among the loudest voices calling for an increase in the number of such visas. But critics argue that some firms use the program to get cheap foreign labor and replace American workers. UC San Francisco in 2016 allegedly used the program to replace Americans with outsourced workers.
“The tech sector is not using these visas to pay low wages— they’re using them for a very specialized skill set,” said Michael Hayes, senior manager of government affairs for the Consumer Technology Association, which counts Apple, Facebook and Google as members.
The average salary for approved H-1B visas in the San Jose area, according to Pew’s data, was $88,800 and in San Francisco was $90,500. The Seattle area had the second-highest average wage, Pew reported, at $ 98,100, just behind the Bridgeport- StamfordNorwalk area of Connecticut with an average of $100,200.
The “quite high” wages paid to H-1B workers in various markets reflect “the importance of foreign workers… to our economy,” Hayes said.
Another industry group, also representing Google, Apple and Facebook, said the Pew report’s data “proves” that science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workers are needed in a wide range of industries.
“Traditional technology
“Traditional technology companies are no longer the only companies or sector that needsworkers who understand programming, engineering, science and other technical skills.” — Jose Castaneda, spokesman for the Information Technology Industry Council
companies are no longer the only companies or sector that needs workers who understand programming, engineering, science and other technical skills,” said Jose Castaneda, spokesman for the Information Technology Industry Council. “We should stop looking at technology as a vertical field and look at it more through a horizontal lens. It is transforming the financial, health, agriculture, automotive, energy industries and more.”
UC Davis computer sci- ence professor Norman Matloff, a frequent critic of alleged H-1B abuse, noted the Pew report doesn’t provide any information about which industries are using the H-1B visa since worker occupations and business sectors aren’t specified. As a result, he said, any conclusions about industryspecific use can’t be drawn from the data.
“That report mixes together… too many regions, too many industries, too many education levels to be useful,” Matloff said.
Changes to the H-1B system may be on the way. A bill introduced in January by Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch and Jeff Flake, and supported by the tech industry, would boost the base allocation of H-1B visas to 85,000 from 65,000, and opens the way for an additional 110,000 per year depending on demand. It also would give priority to holders of master’s degrees or higher, and ban replacement of U. S. workers with H-1B visa holders.
At the same time, to combat abuse of the visa the administration of President Donald Trump in February imposed new rules on employers that require more detail on the justification for seeking foreign workers through the H-1B program.