H-1B VISA cap reached already

[spuwho]

Interesting in that who is a large consumer of IT based H-1B VISA requests.  Walmart.

For what its worth, for those who work in IT, Walmart is known as "The Firm". They spend a great deal of money on recruiting IT talent to Bentonville Arkansas. No remote employees.

But once you are there,  its very hard to transfer inside the company or leave for another company becuase you would have to move. Hence the nickname "The Firm".

H-1B's are just happy they have something in the US and take anything Walmart offers at up 50% less pay.

Its an interesting combination of factors involved.


Per Network World

H-1B cap is reached with 'high number' of visa requests


H-1B cap has been quickly reached, the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Service said Tuesday. The agency said it received a "high number" of visa petitions, but did not have a final count.

It will be a week or two before the immigration service can say exactly how many petitions it has received, a spokeswoman said. The filing period began April 1 for the 2016 fiscal year that begins OctThe U.S. issues 85,000 H-1B visa petitions annually under its two caps, with 20,000 set aside for advanced degree graduates of U.S. schools.

The USCIS expected to quickly exceed the cap this year. Last year it received 172,500 petitions for the H-1B visa under the caps. The government uses a computer-generated lottery to distribute the visas once the cap is exceeded.

A majority of visas are typically requested by IT services companies that use H-1B workers to provide outsourcing services.

The use of the H-1B visa by IT contractors was highlighted in a recent reportby the AFL-CIO, which looked at H-1B visa use by Walmart. It says that between 2007 and 2014, IT contractors filed almost 15,000 petitions for H-1B visas for work in Bentonville, Ark., the hometown of Walmart's headquarters. These numbers are approximate and may include some H-1B users in Bentonville unaffiliated with Walmart.

Walmart uses a number of IT outsourcing contractors, but the largest may be Infosys.

"Walmart and its IT contractors are driving down standards in the tech industry in the U.S. by using H-1Bs visas excessively to keep costs low," said the AFL-CIO, in its report. Walmart was contacted but had not yet responded.

Walmart is among the companies seeking an increase in the H-1B cap. Greg Penner, the vice chairman of the Walmart board of directors, is listed as a supporter of FWD.us, a group lobbying for an H-1B visa cap increase, the union noted in its report.

In response to the AFL-CIO report, Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg said the retailer "is undergoing an historic technology transformation. We are integrating the digital and physical shopping experience and hiring some of the best specialized STEM talent. The vast majority of Walmart technologists are U.S. citizens recruited from some of the best universities and technology companies in the world."

Lundberg said that of the H-1B workers it hires directly, nearly all are sponsored for green cards.

Lundberg questioned the accuracy of the data that AFL-CIO was using, which has based on the Labor Condition Applications, and called the numbers used and the report's premise "inaccurate."

[finehoe]

I wonder if the WalMart apologists on MJ who say things like

Employers compete with each other for workers with the right skills and workers compete with each other for jobs they have the skills for.  Supply and demand affects both what employers pay and what workers accept.

are all for this kind of abuse of H-1Bs.

[spuwho]

I wonder if the WalMart apologists on MJ who say things like

Employers compete with each other for workers with the right skills and workers compete with each other for jobs they have the skills for.  Supply and demand affects both what employers pay and what workers accept.

are all for this kind of abuse of H-1Bs.

I agree its H-1B abuse. But it also shows they struggle at getting talent to move to NW Arkansas.

While they offer huge inducements to get you there, once you are there it changes. If you dont like the changes, its really tough to get out of town.

Because some types of competitive talent will not relocate even with inducements, they have to mine the H-1B pool.

[finehoe]

Because some types of competitive talent will not relocate even with inducements, they have to mine the H-1B pool import low-wage third world labor.

Fixed it for you.