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Immigration Bill Passes the Senate, Includes More H-1B Visas
An anonymous reader writes "While the landmark immigration bill (full text PDF), which recently passed the U.S. Senate, is being hailed as bringing crucial reforms that will vastly improve the state of immigration in this country, there is a provision in it that is seeing relatively little discussion: section 4101, a 'market-based' increase in the amount of H-1B visas for skilled workers. 'The pitched arguments of both sides, which are likely to resurface in the House when it takes up its version of an immigration overhaul, cloud a complicated reality. There is little empirical evidence to suggest that foreign engineers displace American engineers as a whole. If anything, one recent study suggests, the growth of immigrant workers in American companies helps younger American technical workers — more of them are hired and at higher-paying jobs — but has no noticeable consequences, good or bad, on older workers.'"
Precisely, I'm curious as to how they explain all the people that give up on the IT sector because they can't get a job due to the ridiculously narrow job requirements that even entry level positions have.
I'd be fine with a lift on the H-1B visa limits if it required them to actually demonstrate that they had made real efforts to hire Americans first. And that the requirements they were posting were reasonable for the job they were hiring for.
As it is, the job requirements seem more there to show that they're "trying" to hire Americans while ensuring that as few Americans as possible are actually qualified for the job.