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Indicators Of The Year: Immigration

NPR

H-1B is a work visa used to employ specialty workers in the U.S. It's often referred to as the highly skilled worker visa, because many H-1B holders work as engineers, scientists, and in the tech industry. In 2018, 199,000 people applied for an H-1B visa. That's way more than the 85,000 slots available every year. But that's also way down from 2017, when 236,000 people applied for the H-1B. That's roughly a 16% drop in applications. Today on The Indicator, we talk with William Kerr, a professor at Harvard Business School, about what that could mean for the U.S. economy.

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Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.
Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.
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