One of them - the article states that "under current law [the H-1B visa] is capped for private-sector employers at 65,000 per year plus an additional 20,000 for foreign graduates of U.S. universities."
I underlined the misleading information. The 20,000 separate quota is for foreign graduates, surely, but not just for any foreign graduate. It is only for those who have obtained at least a Master's degree from a U.S. university.
Earlier on, the article mentions that the H-1B is the principal IT guestworker visa. First of all, the term 'guestworker' is weird and does not exist in reality. In reality, these kinds of visas are known as non-immigrant visas. Not all these 'guestworker' visas are for workers. Some are for people who are branching out and establishing U.S. subsidiaries, branches or affiliates of their foreign business. By definition, these are not guestworkers, but they are certainly non-immigrants, because their visas are temporary with the presumption that the foreign national will return to his/her country of origin once the visa expires, even though most of these visas allow for 'dual intent' (the ability to seek permanent residence, while at the same time remaining in non-immigrant status).
The other assertion made about the H-1B is that it's the most common visa for IT. Not even close. The L-1B is by far more commonly used (and abused). Why? Simply because it has hardly any compliance requirements, no wage requirements, no education requirements, etc. Companies can even request 'blanket' L visas to cover numerous workers.
For all its faults, the H-1B does have some substantial compliance burdens. Most employers do indeed abide by the rules. This doesn't mean there aren't those who don't abide by the rules, but in general most do. The H is also much more expensive than the L visa. The H-1B visa prohibits an employer from being reimbursed or paid back by the employee. In fact, the employer is required to pay the filing fees and - most lawyers advice - the legal fees.
The article indicates that the report referenced therein determines that a third of all IT openings for college grads is filled by foreign nationals. There were, according to the article and report, 483,000 such openings. This means that of those, only 161,000 of them were filled by foreign nationals (about 33%). The rest (approx. 66%) were not.
So, the idea that somehow these evil foreign nationals steal the IT jobs from right under the 'Murican workers is not that based in reality.
The article also operates on the wrong assumption that, were the cap to be increased, all those H-1Bs would be for IT occupations. This would be true if one didn't know anything about the H-1B. For those of us who actually do know about this, it is a terrible assumption. Did you know that the H-1B visa includes fashion models? Did you know that they too fall under this cap? And did you know that the second largest bloc of employers seeking H-1B foreign nationals is made up of colleges, universities and their affiliated medical/research institutions?
I recall the advice of one of my computer science professors when I was still an engineering major at a large public state institution with strong engineering programs in the early 1990s. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen. As we were talking after class one day, he said that he believed U.S. students would have a hard time competing for IT jobs with foreign students. His reply when I asked 'Why' was simple: because while foreign students are exposed to math and science at early ages, many U.S. students must still deal with weak science and math curricula infused with creationist perspectives.
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