Companies in Charlotte are stepping up their efforts to hire foreign workers – especially for information technology jobs – under a federal visa program that’s becoming a political flashpoint.
The H-1B visa lets companies bring foreign workers to the U.S. temporarily, to fill jobs requiring highly skilled labor. Employers say it helps them fill jobs that draw too few qualified applicants. Critics say some companies abuse it, replacing Americans with foreign tech workers willing to work for less.
Sometimes American IT workers are laid off after spending their final days training their foreign-born replacements.
Demand for these visa workers is growing especially fast in Charlotte. Last year hundreds of employers filed initial applications for more than 16,500 H-1B workers in the Charlotte metro area, many in technology positions. That number alone is bigger than the entire workforce of some of Charlotte’s largest employers.
Supporters of the visas, including local job recruiters, point to a shortage of skilled technology talent that is resulting in thousands of open computing jobs throughout the state. A lack of computer science majors graduating adds to the problem, officials say.
But in some instances, “companies that are bringing in H-1B people at the same time are having staff reductions in the same area – generally speaking, the IT area,” said Bill Chu, a professor at UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics. “There are lots of H-1B people in Charlotte.”
A major source of H-1B workers is India, where experts say technology is a popular field of study and young, English-speaking workers are willing to move abroad for work. According to the federal government, 70 percent of H-1B visas granted in 2014 were designated for someone born in India.
Employers use the visas in different ways. Sometimes they bring a foreign worker with a specialized skill directly onto their staff. Other times, employers lay off Americans, then outsource work to firms that employ large numbers of #H1B workers.
In the Charlotte metro area, nine of the 10 employers who filed the most initial applications for visa workers last year were outsourcing firms, according to an Observer analysis of federal data. The exception was Charlotte-based Bank of America. The bank filed applications for about 380 visa workers, ranking it ninth. Statewide, employers filed applications for more than 33,400 visa workers last year.
Only a portion of such applications are approved each year by the federal government. Employers who received approvals can then enter a lottery held annually in recent years because of high demand. Last year, about one in three applications seeking 85,000 available visas nationwide won the lottery.
Federal data shows companies’ visa applications for Charlotte positions were up 39 percent last year from the year before – surpassing the roughly 25 percent increase nationwide.
In Charlotte, employers’ reliance on visa workers has some on edge about their own job security.
“It is a real concern,” said one Bank of America technology employee who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Other banks, including Wells Fargo, have also filed applications for people on visas to work in Charlotte.
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