Pioneer Press Gets Classic Non-Response Response on FOIA from Immigration

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What’s missing from the decade-old debate on the U.S. visa program for foreign specialty workers is solid information about how the program actually functions. Employers are currently filling some 65,000 jobs by obtaining H-1B visas for foreign workers, but neither they nor the Immigration Service are providing much information on the impact. In January, The St. Paul Pioneer Press got a response to its 2004 Freedom Information Act request for basic program information: a disk that doesn’t contain records of any H-1B visas, has tens of thousands of blank fields where job codes should be, and includes more than 400,000 blank fields for worker’s education levels. The paper’s appeal is now number 2771 in line. (4/4/08)