Here's a strange juxtaposition of stories from the SAJA E-mail Discussion List (a daily collection of articles in the U.S. press about South Asia and the Diaspora; only a tiny fraction show up on SAJAforum; if you'd like to subscribe at no charge, go to http://www.saja.org/lists.html).
Students Fear for Job Prospects in U.S. Visa Crunch (Reuters, April 6) by Jim Finkle:
As foreign students prepare to graduate from U.S. universities this spring, many worry that a record number of applications for U.S. skilled-worker visas may cause them to lose jobs they have already been offered.
Fresh university graduates are vulnerable to being rejected for the H-1B visas designated for skilled workers. A record 150,000 H-1B applications were filed in one day this week, nearly double the number U.S. authorities are allowed to grant in a given fiscal year.
<snip>
ome employers feel it is no longer worth the hassle to obtain U.S. visas for their staff.Internet entrepreneur Rakesh Mathur spent years securing visas to hire engineers for a string of companies he founded in Silicon Valley. With his current venture, a Web technology company known as Webaroo, he decided to hire the bulk of his workers overseas, with 15 employees in the United States and about 100 in India.
"The demand for talent is very real," he says. "And there is a shortfall of trained talent in the United States."
Read the full story and contrast it with the following story from India.
High-tech firms in India search frantically for trained workers (Associated Press, April 6) by Tim Sullivan:
Nearly two decades into India’s phenomenal growth as an international centre
for high technology, the industry has a problem: It’s running out of
workers.
Perhaps India can attract the America-trained students - Indian and non-Indian?
Post your comments below.
