Recession? Not If You're an H1-B User

Not only is "Compete America" looking for 300,000 extra H1-B's in the next few months--they're willing to lie like Hell about how they came up with that number.

First question: if the country is going into recession, what's the "need" for 300,000 extra workers?

Next question: will Congress swallow this pack of lies?

The H-1B 'backlog' of 300,000 is calculated by taking the difference between the yearly cap on H-1Bs and the number of non-exempt visas that are issued. The numbers are erroneous and here is why -- visas issued is not the same as H-1B petitions approved. Compete America and other H-1B advocates purposefully mislead the public by omitting the number of exempt visas issued, which is a significant error.

According to the table on the Heritage website, in 2003 the numbers were as follows:

new visas issued 78,000
yearly cap 195,000
difference -117,000

Those numbers imply that 117,000 less H-1Bs were issued than allowed by the cap, so Compete America argues that those visas should be reissued. Total all of these up since 1992 and you get a 310,100 visa difference. It all sounds compelling,...

(The author now cites uscis.gov files)

The stats on the Heritage page are deceptive because they don't include the total number of H-1B petitions approved. In order to take some of the lies out of the statistics, let's correct them to accurately reflect the number of H-1B petitions approved:

H-1B petitions 217,340
cap 195,000
difference +22,340

(Source: JobDestruction website/newsletter.)

Look, folks. The CEO of Capital One is cutting back on auto loans and tightening up on credit-card issuances, based on increasingly rotten experience in each of these areas. The Philly Fed shows a new graphic that demonstrates a rapidly-softening economy. Bush and the Dems are working on "giveaway" plans, and the Fed went into panic mode on Tuesday.

So we need 300,000 new H1-B's...for what...again?