Friday, August 04, 2006

Is opposition to H-1B racially biased?

With an overwhelming majority of H-1B visa holders coming from India, China or other Asian countries, may be there is a racial element to the opposition. Would there have been so much opposition and misinformation had it been that such large number of H-1B visa holders were Caucasian? Won't they have increased the visa numbers if they could not get in?

There is indeed such a visa in existance exclusively for Australians (where 92% of the population is Caucasian) called the E-3 visa which allows the same kind of people who are eligible for an H-1B visa to come in and work in the U.S. Moreover unlike H-1B visa holders they can stay indefinitely and their spouses can work too. Since the E-3 visa will also essentially have the same effect on American workers as the H-1B visa then why don't we see any opposition to this visa?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jaes,

Maybe you need to also post the number of people granted a work permit on the H1-B and the E-3 visas in any given year. That will lead to more meaningful comparison and a better understanding of the opposition to these visas.

amit

Anonymous said...

I agree with Amit. We need to know the volumes of either visas granted each year to do a proper comparison.
And even otherwise, I wouldn't be surprized to see a racial bias.

~Manoj~

Me said...

H-1B visas are 65,000 per year of which 6,800 are set aside for Chile and Singapore. E-3 visas are 10,500 per year just for Australia. I'm sure considering the population of Australia and the rest of the world, that ratio will reveal a huge bias. Whatever the ratio, using the H-1B opponents lingo that's 10,500 jobs taken away from American workers without any opposition.

Me said...

I'm not suggesting there is racial bias in granting a visa. Also, US can have any kind of bilateral treaty with any nation it likes. However, what I am suggesting is that the arguments that opponents of H1-B visa use can also be used against the E-3 visa but they never criticize the E-3 visa. Is there a racial bias in the opposition?