The Wall Street Journal’s Miriam Jordan identifies a really interesting economic/immigration indicator — the federal H-1B program, which provides 65,000 Visas a year to match highly-skilled immigration labor with U.S. companies, has only received 46,700 applications since they were first accepted in April. It took exactly a day for 65,000 applications to be accepted when the program was rolled out it in 2008. In fact, technology companies often refer H-1B as the “visa roulette” — a virtual lottery system where these companies would collectively like to offer hundreds of thousands positions to talented foreign labor, but can only offer 65,000.

Why are companies and foreign workers not signing up? The most obvious explanation is the economy, the economy, the economy — the technology companies that tend to hire H1-B workers are not expanding.

In fact, I’m not sure if any other competing/complimentary explanation is significant. Jordan does report that “political pressures” have made companies apprehensive about hiring foreign workers over American workers and “America first” political mantras have made highly skilled immigrants feel less wanted. But is there evidence for this? Jordan doesn’t say companies like Google continue to hire, but they’re now focusing on only U.S. hires. On the immigration side, maybe prospective immigrants do get seriously turned off by “U.S. workers first” politicking. But they’re probably more turned off by an American economy that continues to shed jobs.

Finally, a theory Jordan doesn’t offer but the Republican Party should totally run with is that  immigrants are terrified to go to a country run by Barack Obama who will surely tax all their earnings and re-distribute the money to ACORN.

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