Visa Changes to Help Technology Companies
Despite the tech downturn, demand for skilled technology workers continues to outstrip supply in the Southland and nationwide.
But beginning July 30, the Immigration and Naturalization Service plans to expand its Premium Processing Service in a bid to help fill that gap.
The service provides expedited visa-processing privileges to certain foreign workers, such as athletes and entertainers, for a $1,000 fee. And beginning next month, the service is set to be expanded to include tech workers and others with specialized skills.
As a result, foreign tech workers coming to work in the U.S. will be able to get their H-1B visas as quickly as 15 days after they apply, rather than the four months or longer that the process now requires.
“Anything that,up-front,clears the way for us hiring and getting those valued employees on board would be important for our business,” said David Kaye, a spokesman for Amgen Inc., the biotechlogy drug maker in Thousand Oaks.
Delays in visa processing have been a problem for Amgen, which brings in chemists, molecular biologists and others from abroad. Kaye estimates that around 3% of the employees working out of the Thousand Oaks headquarters hold citizenship in other nations.
Likewise, the number of foreign workers at Southland tech firms constitutes a relatively small portion of the firms’ overall workforce. But they are often crucial to the operations because those being recruited from overseas are typically recognized as among the top experts in their specialized field.
“The type of expertise that Amgen needs is in pockets around the world,” Kaye explained. “A lot of the things we do, you can count the number of experts on one hand.”
So expediting the process for bringing such workers into the U.S. is long overdue, said Rohit Shukla, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance, a private nonprofit trade organization.
“There’s no question that we were and still are facing an (information-technology) worker shortage,” Shukla said. “(But expedited visa processing) is a case of too little, too late. A couple of years ago, at the height of the high-tech boom, there was a much greater need for much faster processing.”
Others said the need for tech workers remains acute.
“There are a lot of companies and a lot of businesses that are in need of high-tech workers,” said Paul N. Medved, a Los Angeles immigration attorney.
In short supply are experts in bioinformatics, in which computers are used to create models of compounds, forcing Amgen to bring in people from abroad.
“If they are based in a country other than the U.S., we’d like that not to be a barrier,” Kaye said. He added that there only is a handful of experts in the field of genomics.
Over in El Segundo, International Rectifier Corp., a worldwide provider of power-management semiconductors, hires many of its workers from abroad.
The company regularly faces waits of up to four months when trying to bring foreign hires into the U.S., said Viviana Bianco, an international human resources specialist for the company.
“It’s a problem because, when the managers have identified a candidate, they want him (right away),” she said.
The expansion of the Premium Processing program is one of several changes the INS has made in recent months. And not all of them have been friendly to foreign workers.
Earlier this year, the INS tightened requirements for people in the U.S. on H-1B visas, making them subject to deportation immediately upon their employment being terminated. They can stay if they immediately find a new employer to sponsor a visa petition, and they can begin work as soon as the new application is filed, said Medved.
“There had been sort of a laissez-faire attitude with the INS,” he said. “Up until March, there was a lax, let-slide kind of thing.”
All the various INS changes are certainly worth noting, but “people who are going to (hire foreign workers) are going to do it regardless,” Shukla said.
Bianco of International Rectifier agreed. “High-tech companies brought people into the U.S. when the processing was very, very slow,” she said.
But faster and more streamlined processing of visa applications could be important in the case of another tech boom.
Peschiutta is a staff writer with the Los Angeles Business Journal. n
