GAO Issues Report on the H1B Program
Posted Oct 06, 2000

The General Accounting Office (GAO), a U.S. government agency that investigates the effectiveness of a variety of programs, issued a September 2000 report on the H1B program. While the report expresses some criticisms, it also raises some good points and provides some interesting statistics. It was issued at the request of Representative Patsy T. Mink, Ranking Minority Member on the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, Committee on Government Reform. <m1u2r3t4h5y>

The GAO analyzed data that INS had already collected on the characteristics of H1B workers, such as type of job, country of origin, and age. The report also explores issues including the quality and consistency of INS adjudications, the ability of the INS or the Department of Labor (DOL) to enforce some of the rules of the program, and efforts being made to train the U.S. workforce to fill jobs in the rapidly expanding information technology (IT) field. According to the report, about 60 percent of the positions for which H1B petitions were approved for Fiscal Year (FY) 1999 were in the IT field. <m1u2r3t4h5y>

Some other interesting statistics (again for FY 1999) were as follows: The median age of H1B workers during that period was 28, and almost half of the workers were from India. As compared with professionals in other fields, the IT H1Bs were younger, more likely to be from India, and more likely to be coming in from overseas, as opposed to already being in the U.S. <m1u2r3t4h5y>

Among the criticisms were the lack, until recently, of uniform standards for INS adjudicators, and certain limitations on DOL's ability to investigate issues such as alleged wage violations. In fact, changes to DOL enforcement procedures and penalties were made in the 1998 H1B law known as the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act, but the GAO report does not address the effect of those changes. GAO also discussed processing delays and the inability of the INS computer system to provide an accurate count of the H1B usage. <m1u2r3t4h5y>

Also included in the report is a description of various efforts by both the government and U.S. employers to improve the IT skills of the U.S. workforce.