According to the Boston Globe, 20% of the H-1B petitions approved last year went to four such firms: Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro. Outsourcing firms like Tata Consultancy Services, in fact, have dominated the H-1B arena nationally. Nielsen had 110 American staffers train the Indian workers, who went back home. In 2008, for example, Nielsen, the television ratings firm based near Tampa, brought in a group of Indian workers on H-1B visas through Tata Consultancy Services. Many companies, they say, use the visa program to import cheap replacements for American workers.Ī particular source of anger for some is firms that import foreigners to facilitate the overseas outsourcing of jobs. The visas are issued for up to three years and can be extended to six years.Ĭritics - including labor unions, professional associations and antiimmigration activists - charge that claims of a STEM-worker shortage are overblown. firms to hire foreign workers with “specialty skills” that are in short supply Domestically, including scientists, engineers, computer programmers and physical therapists.įlorida companies have been granted more than 22,500 H-1B visa requests since 2011, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services data. “Regardless of what you do - health care or education or entertainment and hospitality - everything has the elements of information technology built into it.”Īnd so each year, Watson and hundreds of other Florida employers - many in the IT and health care industry - turn to the federal H-1B program, established by Congress in 1990 to allow U.S. Meanwhile, the demand for IT professionals is growing far beyond what traditional tech employers have required, she says. “There are just not enough people going into all the different levels of education” in the socalled STEM fields, says Pamela Nabors, president and CEO of CareerSource Central Florida, a nonprofit agency that provides recruitment and employment services to job seekers and businesses in the Orlando area. That’s just about half of the 122,300 job openings in computing that the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts. “I haven’t had an American even sniff a job ad that I’ve run.Īccording to research by Microsoft, the average number of computer science graduates each year (including bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D.s) is around 60,000. Watson says he advertises his openings on popular employment websites such as Dice, ComputerJobs and but rarely finds qualified candidates from the U.S. Some have permanent resident status (“green cards”), while others come here as guest workers on permits called H-1B visas. Most of his employees aren’t American citizens. Salaries start at about $65,000 and climb upward of $100,000 a year. He employs about 16 computer IT consultants who specialize in design and development, project management, quality assurance and database administration. John Watson is president and chief technology officer of a small, Jacksonville-based IT consulting and software development firm.
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