Tuesday, May 16, 2017

H-1B Visa Economic mpacts

According to the National Bureau of Ecomonic Research (NBER) in their 2017 published study Understanding the Economic Impact of the H-1B Program on the U.S. wages for Computer Scientists would have been 2.6% to 5.1% higher from 1994 to 2001 had it not been affected by immigration permitted under the H-1B Visa Program. The study also finds that employment for US Workers would have been 6.1% to 10.8% higher in the same period if it not for the H-1B visa program.

The overall opinion of US Tech workers, while generally strongly supportive of diversity in Science and Technology Careers in US companies is that the H-1B Visa program has limited opportunities in those career fields for US workers and has kept salaries suppressed. The ongoing controversy of the H-1B Visa Program could be moderated by stricter standards for administration to insure that the program is not used for importing cheap labor and that qualified US citizen workers are given priority in hiring and promotion especially in Federal, State and Local Government including public colleges and universities.