Magically with a 10% unemployment rate and a 17.5% underemployment rate in the United States, somehow the U.S. needs guest workers. The 65,000 H-1B cap was reached recently.

Most of the visas are obtained by American subsidiaries of Indian outsourcing firms, such as Infosys Technologies Ltd., Wipro Ltd., Satyam Computer Services Ltd., and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. The Indian companies hire skilled workers abroad, then send them to US firms as contract workers.

Why are Indian body shops getting to displace U.S. workers?

Why isn't this being stopped instead of Obama spending billions to create jobs? One could create thousands of jobs in tech alone by stopping this labor arbitrage practice

Ron Hira, associate professor of public policy at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York State, said it is unclear whether the increase in visa demand indicates an overall improvement in economic growth.

“I think the economy might be moving up for the companies hiring H-1bs,’’ Hira said. “That doesn’t mean the economy’s going up for companies that hire American workers.’’

Critics of the H-1b program say that in today’s economy, there is no need to go abroad for workers. “The job market is terrible,’’ said Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild, a group of American software developers opposed to the visa program. “If we have 12 percent unemployment in Silicon Valley, it’s hard to say there’s a shortage of tech workers.’’