Like it or not, Cisco is once again being pulled into the H-1B visa debate, this time through a Mercury News story.
Mercury News reports that Cisco ranked 13th in the list of top 200 employers of foreign worker visas in 2006 – that much we knew. The story also cites figures found at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Web site, which reports that the number of H-1B applications filed by Cisco rose from 481 in 2004 to 1,027 in 2005 to 2,283 in 2006. A Cisco spokesperson would neither confirm or deny those figures.
The paper quotes Lynn Shotwell, executive director of the American Council on International Personnel, an industry trade group, as saying the tallies are misleading because companies often file multiple applications for a single person or large blanket applications for a number of positions they might not ultimately need because they want as many as possible before the cap is reached.
Mercury News adds:
Still, the applications do show the types of jobs companies hope to fill. At the low end, Cisco wanted a visa for a customer support engineer position that would pay at least $46,900 annually. At the high end, Cisco wanted a visa for a director of manufacturing that would pay from $166,566 to $212,300.
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