The University of California and other organizations are currently lobbying to increase the cap on H-1B visas in light of how quickly the visa cap was reached earlier this month.
If the lobbying is successful, future graduated international students studying at U.S. universities may have an easier time obtaining the visa.
H-1B visas allow foreign workers with the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree to work in the U.S. for up to 6 years in certain industries. The current cap on these visas, 65,000, was reached hours after applications began being accepted.
With 3,979 international students, UCLA enrolls the 11th largest number of international students in the nation, according to a report published by the Institute of International Education,
Last month Reps. Luis V. Gutierrez, D-Ill., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., introduced the Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy (STRIVE) Act, a comprehensive bill that calls for increasing the H-1B cap to 115,000.
University workers and students are exempt from H-1B immigration law, but graduating international students are affected when their Optional Practical Training period, which allows them to work in the U.S. for one year, expires.
“The biggest concern is that the quota ran out in one day,” said Bernard Wolfsdorf, national second vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, an organization involved in lobbying Congress to increase the cap on H-1B visas which also works with UCLA’s Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars.
Chris Harrington, a UC spokesperson, said the university is working to educate foreign students, visiting scholars and faculty about visa delays.
He also said the university is involved with National Association of Foreign Student Advisers: Association of International Educators, a professional association that has members at UC campuses.
Ursula Oaks, director for press relations at NAFSA, said her organization supports immigration reform that would increase the cap on H-1B visas.
She said it is hard to say if changes to the visa cap will happen this year, but added that this is an important issue for graduated international students who studied at U.S. schools.
“We benefit from keeping that foreign talent that we train in the U.S.,” she said.
Bob Erickson, director of the Dashew Center, said the center participated in NAFSA’s annual advocacy day in Washington, D.C., where H-1B visa issues were discussed within the context of more comprehensive immigration reform. He said this is an important issue as it relates to the country’s competitiveness.
Wolfsdorf said a comprehensive immigration reform bill, as opposed to a bill that addresses immigration issues “piecemeal,” has the greatest chance of passing.
“H-1B increases (are) a very important part of this, but it’s just one aspect … and quite frankly they need to fix the whole thing,” he said.
Opponents of increasing the H-1B visa cap argue that the cap protects American jobs and keeps wages from decreasing.
Jack Martin, special projects director at Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes the STRIVE bill, said the increased demand during the past few years for H-1B visas “is simply a demonstration … that employers have increasingly learned that they can benefit from hiring foreign H-1B workers and thereby holding down payroll costs.”
“We would like to see measures adopted as part of the H-1B system that incorporates a market-based test as to whether there is any real need for H-1B workers,” Martin said.
But Wolfsdorf stressed that many of the affected science and technology industries have extremely low unemployment rates and few highly skilled American workers are unemployed.
“(Critics) have decided to beat the anti-immigrant drum instead of reporting that we have under two percent unemployment in the high-tech industries,” Wolfsdorf said. “The fact of the matter is immigrants don’t take jobs, they create jobs.”