> Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Washington, said it looks forward to “providing the Administration with additional information.” Of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications it submitted in the last fiscal year, the company said 80% were “to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees.”
> “These were not to hire new people,” Microsoft said in a statement. “The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country.”
H-1(b) critics often (ignorantly or dishonestly) compare visa petition numbers to layoff numbers (essentially a stock vs. a flow), so it is nice to see this addressed by the company and in the article.
I suspect the H-1(b) program is the subject of so much scrutiny (instead of L-1, O-1, or OPT) specifically because every employer has to report the number of H-1(b) petitions they make each year.
> “These were not to hire new people,” Microsoft said in a statement. “The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country.”
H-1(b) critics often (ignorantly or dishonestly) compare visa petition numbers to layoff numbers (essentially a stock vs. a flow), so it is nice to see this addressed by the company and in the article.
I suspect the H-1(b) program is the subject of so much scrutiny (instead of L-1, O-1, or OPT) specifically because every employer has to report the number of H-1(b) petitions they make each year.