Corporate America’s assault on the middle class continues. Despite the jobless epidemic, U.S. companies are tripping over themselves to fill high-paying job openings with workers from overseas. The BusinessInsider reports that tech titans led by Microsoft (MSFT) and IBM (IBM), have already maxed out their allotment of 65,000 1H-1B employees.
The article says that U.S. companies have set a three-year record in how quickly they reached the cap for H-1B workers. The applications process for 2012 opened on April 1 and on November 23, the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services department announced that the cap had been reached.
But there are more than 65,000 jobs at stake. The USCIS also received “more than 20,000 H-1B petitions filed for persons exempt from the cap under the ‘advanced degree’ exemption,” it said. In addition, petitions for workers who already have their visas are not counted toward the cap.
The H-1B visa is a temporary work visa for those classified as “skilled workers” such as IT staff, engineers, doctors, and scientists, and the pay is good. For instance, the average salary for a worker th
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.