Employers such as higher-education institutions and nonprofit research entities were responsible for more than a quarter of H-1B visa requests in the Syracuse metropolitan area in 2010-2011, a new report from the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program found. Brookings released the report, titled “The Search for Skills: Demand for H-1B Immigrant Workers in U.S. Metropolitan […]
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Employers such as higher-education institutions and nonprofit research entities were responsible for more than a quarter of H-1B visa requests in the Syracuse metropolitan area in 2010-2011, a new report from the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program found.
Brookings released the report, titled “The Search for Skills: Demand for H-1B Immigrant Workers in U.S. Metropolitan Areas,” on July 18. H-1B visas allow employers to hire skilled foreign workers for temporary employment in specialized occupations.
Brookings did not analyze the number of visas that were granted by the federal government, according to Jill Wilson, a senior research analyst at Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program and co-author of the report. Its report focused on demand, she says.
“This is visa requests from employers, not the number granted,” Wilson says.
In Syracuse, employers such as colleges and universities, which are designated “uncapped” employers, made 25.5 percent of all requests for H-1B visas on average in 2010 and 2011. That means the region had the 18th highest portion of uncapped-employer visa requests out of 106 areas Brookings examined. Nationally, 10 percent of requests originate from such employers, the institution estimated.
The “uncapped” designation stems from federal regulations on the number of H-1B visas that can be granted each fiscal year. Uncapped employers — which include higher-education institutions or related nonprofit entities, nonprofit research entities, and governmental research entities — are not subject to caps on the number of visas that can be granted nationwide.
Private firms are bound by those caps and are referred to as “capped” employers. Currently, the government will only grant a total of 85,000 H-1B visas in a year to all the capped employers in the country.
Total requests for H-1B visas in 2010-2011 averaged 335 in the Syracuse area, according to Brookings. The region ranked 85th in requests in the report.
The top H-1B-requesting area was New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, where employers asked for 52,921 of the visas. But H-1B demand was not limited to the largest metropolitan areas like New York City, Wilson says.
“One surprise of this report was that smaller metropolitan areas are demanding these H-1B workers,” she says. “We actually found that every metropolitan area of the 366 in the United States requested at least one H-1B visa.”
However, Brookings only analyzed regions that made 250 or more H-1B requests. So its report included Syracuse but not metropolitan areas like Binghamton or Utica.
In Syracuse, employers requested 119 visas for computer occupations, the most of any occupation. They requested 68 visas for health diagnosing and treating practitioners, 38 for engineers, and 32 for postsecondary teachers.
The institution also looked at demand intensity, or the number of H-1B visas requested per 1,000 workers in each metropolitan area. Syracuse registered a demand intensity of 1.1, which was 91st out of the 106 areas Brookings examined. The national average was 2.4.
Additionally, Brookings broke down the number of H-1B visa requests for jobs in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Syracuse employers made 55.1 percent of their H-1B visa requests for jobs in those fields, 85th out of the regions covered in the report.
Another analysis Brookings performed shed light on government funding for programs that are designed to alleviate U.S. workers’ skill shortages. The institution examined the distribution of revenue generated by employers’ H-1B visa fees — fees that range from $1,575 to $4,325 per application, depending on the type of employer.
“Our report is the first time anyone’s layered the data this way to look at where the fees have been awarded compared to where the demand for H-1Bs would be,” Wilson says.
The Syracuse region pulled in more grant money from H-1B visa-funded programs than its demand for the visas would suggest. It received $1.2 million in grant funding, good for 62nd out of the regions Brookings reviewed. In dollars per capita, Syracuse received $2.26, which was 54th in the report.
Only 70 of the 106 metropolitan areas Brookings sampled received grant funding from H-1B programs in 2010-2011.
The Brookings report recommended adapting to regional shifts in H-1B visa demand by forming an independent standing commission that would recommend immigration-policy changes. It also suggested aiming programs funded by H-1B visa fees at metropolitan areas that have a high demand for H-1B workers.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the Syracuse area should lose all of its funding for grant programs coming from H-1B visa fees, according to Wilson. Programs that help put students through STEM training in college in one region can help boost work-force skills in another region, she says.
“We would argue that the alignment there is not as necessary,” she says. “Someone who is in school in Syracuse may not stay there.”