Comment by connorboyle
4 hours ago
> 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.
> 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.
Do visa petition numbers not reflect a 'flow'? Why should the petitioned number not go down as visas are granted?
The complaints I've seen are that massive layoffs happen then are followed by visa petition increases by similar numbers. Or perhaps massive layoffs happen while massive numbers of visa petitions are open. Now, perhaps the two are for very different types of jobs, but one might want that to be checked.