International

Immigration Reform and the Engineering Shortage

Issue
H-1B and employment-based (EB) immigrant visa programs are utilized to gain authorization for foreign citizens to work in the United States. These programs are essential to ensuring the engineering industry can recruit highly skilled foreign engineering professionals to help address the critical shortage of engineers in the United States today.

To qualify for an H-1B visa, the potential employee must hold at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in experience, training, and education in the relevant field. A statutory cap limits the number of H-1B petitions that may be approved in each fiscal year. The general cap is 65,000 H-1B visas, although an additional 20,000 H-1B visas are available to foreign workers who hold a master’s degree, or higher, from an accredited U.S. university.

The primary problem is that demand for H-1B visas far outweighs the supply. For example, the H-1B cap for FY 2010 was reached in December 2009, which means U.S. employers will be unable to hire qualified professionals until October 1, 2010.

ACEC Position
ACEC favors an increase in the number of H-1B and EB immigrant visas as a means of addressing the shortage of engineering professionals in the United States. ACEC supports legislation that would double the cap in H-1B visas from 65,000 to 130,000 a year, and remove H-1B caps for foreign students receiving an advanced degree from a U.S. university in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) fields.

ACEC also encourages Congress not to focus on immigration enforcement only legislation that would be overly burdensome to U.S. small businesses by requiring them to utilize an “electronic employee verification system” that is inadequate to meet the demands that would be placed on it.