H-1B visa again and again

Being in the IT world and especially in the US, you cant afford to ignore the controversy over H-1B visa program, a program that allows foreign workers to come to the US and work mostly in IT related Jobs.

The program was designed initially to help IT companies with their needs for skilled labor, most of the early holders of H-1B visas were International students graduate of American colleges and universities, the program was designed to keep those international students who can secure jobs after graduation from living the country.

Initially the program worked well, mostly the hiring companies were paying the H-B1 visa holders the same wages that they would pay American workers, and there were more visas available than there were job seekers. I know this because I worked in an IT companies with few employees holding H-B1 Visas. Those employees were getting paid the same as American workers and our company lawyer used to tell me “there are more visas than there are job seekers.”

This whole program started to get controversial when some IT companies started to setup recruiting offices overseas to hire IT workers on H-1B visas and thouthands of workers (sometimes not-qualified and not-well paid) started to enter the US labor market.

All things being said, lets look at the actual number of H-B1 Visa holders and how they are affecting the American labor market and than you can make your own judgement.

The US population is about 300 Millions (estimated), and the H-1B visa holders would be by now about 1 million workers, if we assumed in the last 10 years we have 100,000 new H-1B visa holders coming each year and not living the country. If you do the math, you will find that the H-1B visa holders are not even 0.05 of the total US population.