Nursing and Teaching are Jobs Americans Won't Do?

Edited by Jessica Vaughan.

Lost in the debate over H-1B visas - which are typically portrayed as going mainly to high-tech or computer programming workers - is the fact that certain American colleges, universities, and medical facilities are also heavy users of this program. According to a searchable list of H-1B employers recently posted on Computer World magazine’s web site, a number of U.S. educational and health care institutions each sponsored hundreds of guest workers in 2008. Using this database, we identified 300 universities and 318 colleges that were approved for a total of 5,755 foreign workers. In addition we identified 465 public school systems, approved for 1,522 workers. Finally, we found 379 hospitals, and 948 health or medical employers who hired a combined 4,787 workers.
The H-1B program allows an employer to hire a foreign worker on a "temporary” basis in a job that requires specialized knowledge and a bachelor's degree (or the equivalent). Medicine, health, and education, as well as architecture, engineering, mathematics, physical sciences, social sciences, business specialties, accounting, law, theology, and the arts are considered “specialty occupations.”

Current law provides an unlimited number of H-1B visas for universities, research institutions, and certain other employers, and up to 85,000 H-1B visas to other employers. The jobs they fill generally are not "temporary"; the guestworkers can stay for up to six years or longer, and often apply for green cards before their status expires.

Listed below are the education and health care industry employers with the largest number of workers approved in 2008. The total number of H-1B workers employed is likely to be much higher. We found these statistics using keyword searches of the database.

Previous CIS research shows that H-1B computer programming workers earn significantly less and are typically less skilled and less experienced than similar U.S. workers in that field.

These statistics raise questions about the degree to which the education and health care industries may have become reliant on guest worker programs instead of training U.S. workers to fill these jobs. As the program is currently set up, employers have an incentive to choose H-1B guest workers. While there may be a shortage of workers here who will accept the wages and conditions they offer, there is no shortage of individuals overseas who will accept those terms. As long as the visas are available in unlimited quantities, there is no reason for these employers to train U.S. workers or to improve the compensation. Further, if decent job prospects are limited, there will be little incentive for young people in this country to earn degrees in these fields, which will further increase their dependency on foreign workers. (For more on this question see “Professional Guest worker Visas and Employment Opportunities for U.S. Workers," by Jessica Vaughan).