Labor Immigration Law

The Department of Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification has released its October 2007 - May 2008 statistics on PERM processing.  It is interesting to note that 44% of the active (pending) PERM cases were in “Audit” stage, most likely in connection with the recent decision to audit all PERM applications filed by a major immigration law firm.

Among the other statistics are breakdown by state of intended employment (California is,  not surprisingly, the largest); aliens’ countries of nationality (India is top); and top job titles (Computer Software Engineers are top).

Read the full report here.

The Washington Post published today an article about the H-1B visa program and how its benefits and problems affect immigrants, employers and American workers.  The article is fairly short but it compresses the feelings of the three major stakeholders in the H-1B visa program debate.

The U.S. Employers
The H-1B program was designed to help U.S. companies obtain temporary skilled foreign workers to assist in projects for which there is a shortage of U.S. workers.  During the dot-com boom, most of these H-1B visas were used by software companies attracting talented software engineers from India, China, or eastern Europe.  Today, many of these H-1B visas are used by a more diverse group of U.S. employers, but software engineers are still among the highest in demand.

Based on the number of applications for this year’s H-1B season, 163,000, compared to last year’s number of 140,000, the demand for skilled foreign labor is strong and getting stronger. According to the Post article, companies, “offer the same salaries and perks whether you’re from Baltimore or Bangladesh . . . but [they] simply cannot find enough qualified U.S.-born staff to fuel [their] growth.”

The Foreign Talent
Foreign skilled workers’ stake in the H-1B visa program is often distorted.  The Post article highlights how many of these skilled workers come to the U.S. on H-1B visa and use the H-1B visa’s “dual intent” status to start a procedure of obtaining a permanent residency.  This, after all, is how this great country was built, and such influx of talent should not only be temporary, for the duration of the H-1B visa of six years, but should be made permanent to that the U.S. economy, as a whole, benefits.

The Critics
There are critics of the H-1B program, of course, and the Post article outlines their position.  Some critics consider the H-1B program a “cheap labor” allowing U.S. businesses to hire and sometimes exploit foreign workers who come to the U.S. and often have little or no bargaining power.  While such comments are justified in certain occasions and based on past cases by some employers, such cases seem to be limited to few individual employers and the Department of Labor is tasked with ensuring that no wage discrimination and workplace abuse takes place.

Conclusion
The debate about the benefits and disadvantages of the H-1B program will continue for as long as the program exists.  In economic slowdown, it is easy to point the finger to foreign workers as taking away jobs from qualified American workers.  But we should not lose sight of the greater benefit to the economy caused by the constant influx of educated foreigners who allow U.S. companies to stay competitive in a global economy.

The Department of Labor (DOL) has released the PERM statistics for the first two quarters of its Fiscal Year (FY) 2008, covering the period between October 1, 2007, and March 31, 2008 (the “Period”).

During the Period, there were 44,090 PERM applications received, there were 12,600 cases certified and, as of March 23, 2008, there were 28,000 cases pending.

Among the highlights provided by DOL are that 66% of the certified PERM cases were H-1B workers.  The top five states of intended employment were California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Florida.  Among the countries, India was top, followed by China, South Korea, Philippines, Mexico, Canada, and the U.K.

Earlier in February, the Office of Foreign Labor Certification at the Department of Labor released its official FY 2007 data covering cases processed under the Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM). The PERM data provides an insight into the level of demand for U.S. jobs in different industry sectors and geographic areas. This data is equally useful to current and prospective PERM applicants (employees and employers) and to U.S. employers in general.

Summary of the PERM Data

During FY 2007, there were 98,753 applications processed and 85,112 PERM cases certified (an approval rate of 85%). Out of the 85,112 certified cases, 55,214 were employed on H-1B visa. Similarly, out of the 85,112 certified cases, about 30% had Bachelor’s degree and 48% had Masters or higher degree. The average age at certification was 34 and the average annual wage offer was $64,589. .

Economic Sectors

It may not come as a surprise that the top economic sector by a large margin was Information Technology, at 21,581 certifications, followed by Advanced Manufacturing with 11,980 certifications and Educational Services with 6,192 certifications. It may be worth noting that while the top economic sectors with PERM certifications had a high percentage of Bachelor or higher degree and a high wage, there were three sectors, Hospitality and Tourism, with 4,769 certifications, and Construction, with 3,902 certifications, and Agrobusiness, with 1,069 certifications, which had fairly low percentage of Bachelor’s degree or higher (under 30%).

See the full FY 2007 PERM Economic Sectors Chart.

Top Occupations in Demand

In line with the economic sector numbers, the top three occupations were Computer Software Engineers with 9,844 PERM certifications, System Software Engineers, with 5,716 certifications, and Computer System Analysts, with 4,012 certifications. Interestingly, the fourth ranked occupation was restaurant cooks, with 2,642 certifications.

See the full FY 2007 PERM Occupations Chart.

Top Countries of Citizenship

The top five countries were India, with 24,573 certifications (29%), China, with 6,846 certifications (8%), Mexico, with 6,442 certifications (8%), South Korea, with 5,159 certifications (6%), and Canada, with 4,837 certifications (6%).

See the full FY 2007 PERM Applicant Countries Chart.

PERM Certification by State

California had the most PERM certifications, 20,222 (or 23%) by a large margin, followed by New York, 8,843 (10%), New Jersey, 6,594 (7%), and Texas, 6,534 (7%). It is interesting to note that the highest paying jobs went to Washington State (average annual wage of $82,698) which most likely can be explained by Microsoft’s heavy reliance on PERM to bring in qualified foreign-born software engineers.

See the full FY 2007 PERM States Chart.

The Department of Labor has released an interesting report regarding the number of PERM and H-2A/H-2B labor certifications.

For the period between October and December 2007, DOL received almost 20,000 PERM on-line submissions and slightly over 1,000 mail-in submissions. DOL completed work on 16,200 cases, of which 12,500 were certified (78% certification rate), 2,800 were denied (17%) and 800 were withdrawn (5%).

It is interesting to compare the approval rates for the Oct-Dec 2007 period with the historical certification rate since PERM started in March 2005. The historical overall certification rate is slightly above 78% which seems to indicate that the Oct-Dec 2007 certification rate was in line with historical averages.

Among other interesting findings in the report are the top five states of intended employment - California (23%), New York (10%), New Jersey (7%), Texas (7%) and Florida (6%). Few would be surprised that Indian nationals were the top nationality with 28% of all certified applications and computer software engineers were the top occupation with 17%.

In the H-2A/H-2B section of the report, it is worth noting that there was a significant increase in both the number of requested and certified labor certifications for both the agricultural and non-agricultural programs in FY07 compared to FY06. This seems to suggest that more employers are resorting to H-2 visas to obtain temporary labor. [See our recent post on H-2B cap.]

The relevant portion of the DOL report can be read here (PDF).