I f you type the characters H-1B into the Internet search engine Alta Vista, it will refer you to over 12,000 Web pages, most of which are sites of immigration lawyers. They are offering help to high-tech U.S. companies and potential workers from overseas who want to use the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services H-1B visa program. The number of Web sites reflects the demand for visas that allow qualified foreign workers to take jobs in the U.S. for those skilled in high-tech, high-demand fields, for up to six years.
In film and video, those jobs are chiefly in visual effects and computer animation, but the demand for H-1B visas is fueled by the seemingly insatiable demands of Silicon Valley. The need for qualified visual effects people has exceeded supply since the mid-90s, when several visual effects companies were staffing up major facilities. While the visual effects business occupies a relatively small fraction of the 115,000 H-1B visas currently available annually, several effects company executives say the program is crucial to their continued success, but that the amount allotted is inadequate for their needs.
The H-1B visa process is significantly important to our business, says Laurence Plotkin, director of human resources and recruitment at Digital Domain, Venice, Calif. We take advantage of building relationships internationally [thats] equal to the kinds of relationships we build domestically. We make an extra effort to build relationships in Europe and Canada and Japan, and thats a reason people have an affinity for usawe extend ourselves to students, to help develop them while they are still in school. Digital Domain currently counts approximately 25 staffers who have H-1B visas; Digital Domain has about 200 effects artists.
Its beyond important, says Chuck Richardson, senior VP/general manager of Blue Sky Studios, Harrison, N.Y. Its absolutely necessary. There are not enough people to fill the jobs required. We were at seventy people when I started here six months ago. Were at about one hundred thirty or one hundred forty right now, and were going to be up around two hundred in another six months. There are another sixty slots for highly trained people that have to be filled, and those people are not readily available [in the U.S.] Blue Sky is currently staffing up with animators, technical directors and software people to work on Ice Age, a feature film directed by Chris Wedge, Blue Skys creative director. Were casting our nets as widely as we can, Richardson says. We have at least a half dozen people on H-1s right now. We have several pending, and several have been turned down because they shut down the quotas.
History
Prior to the passage of the Immigration Act of 1990, there was no cap on the number of H-1B workers allowed to enter the country. That act, however, capped the visas at 65,000 per year, but it wasnt until fiscal year 97, which ended that Sept. 30, that the cap was first reached. In 98, legislation was passed that raised the cap on H-1B visas from 65,000 to 115,000 for the fiscal years Oct. 1998- Sept. 1999 and Oct. 1999 to Sept. 2000. The law will reduce the number of visas to 107,500 in fiscal year Oct. 2000-Sept. 2001, before reverting to the original 65,000 cap in fiscal year Oct. 2001-Sept. 2002 (SHOOT, 10/23/98, p.1). Since the number of visas was upped to 115,000, the cap has been reached before the end of the fiscal year. This year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service stopped accepting applications for the visas in March, just halfway into the fiscal year (SHOOT, 3/31, p. 1).
Several bills to raise the H-1B limit have been introduced in Congress, with the most attention being paid to H.R. 3983, from Reps. David Dreier (R-CA) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). The bill, dubbed Helping Improve Technology and Competitiveness (HITEC) Act, would increase the limit on H-1B visas to 200,000 for fiscal years 2001, 2002, and 2003. The act would also address long-term issues such as improving mathematics, science and technology education.
Not surprisingly, the visual effects industry is in full agreement with any effort to raise the cap, and most companies are willing to navigate a somewhat difficult visa process that many say is not particularly tailored to how they do business. Michael Biber, general counsel for Industrial Light+Magic and director of business affairs for Lucas Digital, both in San Rafael, Calif., says the H-1B program is very important there, with about 100, or almost 10 percent, of its technical workforce on such visas.
Further, he says the program is very important to the U.S. economy. Were creating product here that is a tremendous export, explains Biber. We need to have the people here to turn out that export. There is a shortage of the types of talent we need, and we have a quite ambitious recruiting program at ILM.
Biber emphasizes that the program is structured so that companies must pay prevailing wages for employees coming from outside the U.S. If we could find the people here, wed be overjoyed, he says. There is no savings in terms of salary. It costs us a fair amount to relocate them, and recruitment is expensive. If we could avoid it, we would.
Visual effects houses are trying to facilitate long-term solutions to the shortage of high-tech workers. One way of doing that is to become more involved in the education process. For example, Biber points out that the ILM sends guest speakers to schools, and offers job placement to students. Were initiating the program to bring people in from high schools to entry-level jobs and familiarize them with the process, and hopefully groom them for jobs, explains Biber.
John Hughes, president/CEO of Rhythm & Hues Studios (R&H), Los Angeles, says R&H awards five scholarships each yearaone to the best applicant in modeling, one in animation and three in computer cinematography. Its a worldwide competition, open to college and masters degree students, explains Hughes. Its a $1,000 prize to the winning entry, and $4,000 to the school that produced the winning entry. Its our attempt to have an influence on the academic programs and what we think is important in those programs. Digital Domains Plotkin says the company is sometimes part of curriculum advisory committees at various schools both in the U.S. and abroad, and sometimes sends guest artists to lecture them.
Real Need
At R&H, about a third of the digital artists and technology people are foreign-born, says Hughes. In the critical areas of art and technology, thirty to forty percent of those people are either H-1B, have green cards, or the Canadian equivalent. This program has been important to every high-technology company in the United States.
Pacific Data Images (PDI), Palo Alto, Calif., has about 30 people on H-1B visas out of about 60 on all types of visas and a total workforce that numbers around 330. Jenene Wilson, VP of human resources, says PDI participates in a variety of international festivals to scout the best talent. Were generally going for the best people we can find, she says. We find people from all sorts of places. Some we might have learned about out of the country. Or they find us. Many already may be in the United States working for another company, and we transfer them over.
Kleiser-Walczak, bicoastal and North Adams, Mass., has a handful of staffers on H-1B visas. Alison Brown, executive producer at the New York-based commercial division, says the current cap on visas is preventing her from bringing more on board. We have several people waiting who filed before the cutoff, she says. We are looking at a lot of reels and a lot of them are from Europe and Japan. There are people we would really like to bring in. Theyre very skilled and very good, and yet I cant [hire them now]. Theyre definitely on our radar, but right now I have to try to find equal talent here.
requirements
By their very nature, visual effects and animation companies have a more difficult time than Silicon Valley companies in finding talent today. Although both kinds of companies have software engineers on staff, the greater need in the effects arena is for artists. Many artisans hold the high-tech degrees required by the INS for H-1B visas, but in many cases their talents and training are more difficult to match to the INS requirements.
The Department of Labor requires certain levels of education, and artists often dont have that kind of formal education, ILMs Biber says. You have to make the case and argue equivalencies and experience as opposed to academic records. We dont necessarily draw our artists from high-tech. They are not necessarily people who are working for animation studios or anything. These are people we choose first on artistic talent. In computer graphics, the primary need is for artists, as opposed to somebody with a computer background.
Hughes agrees that the process can be very difficult if the artist doesnt have the right degree. If they dont have a four-year degree in an appropriate field, its very difficult to get them in, he says. They need three years of relevant work experience for every year they are short.
San Francisco-based Radium has only one H-1B staffer: Sebastian Harms, a designer from Germany. Jonathan Keeton, principal/creative director at the company, doesnt believe the needs of his relatively small shop merit going the H-1B route broadly, but he did want this particular designer, and it wasnt an easy process. He was simply the best designer we had come across, Keeton says, but its a little hard to do an H-1B if you say theyre a good artist. Fortunately, he was quite well-versed in computers. He had the bare minimum as far as the H-1B goes. He qualified under the technical guidelines, but what we got him for was his talent.
Keeton recalls the process taking four or five monthsaalmost double the usual processing timeaand costs approaching $10,000. The guy was in Germany waiting to come back. We were anxious to get going, and we wrote our representative and our senators and got results. Its a very slow and uncertain process, but the bottom line is that if youre a company looking for talent, and talent is your competitive edge, you want to be able to get it.
Although it can be difficult to find U.S. talent, some visual effects executives find it easier than looking overseas for artists. We are actually finding that recruiting overseas is not a good idea. Its a lot of expense, says Alan Barnett, partner/visual effects supervisor at Sight Effects, Venice, Calif. Theres a lot of time involved in bringing someone over, and if it doesnt work out, youre out of pocket for a substantial amount. Plus, youve got someone here on an H-1 and youre not happy or theyre not happy. They then have to look elsewhere and you have to look for somebody. Weve actually had a couple of situations that have ended, for one reason or another, where weve parted company with the people weve brought in, and its a cumbersome ordeal. Weve decided that recruiting is better done here.
There is broad and optimistic support in the effects community for a higher cap, and several industry executives would like to see provisions that better reflect the project-based nature of their business and speed up the process. The H-1B and the immigration program as a whole are not very conducive to project hires, says Hughes. We might hire someone for six months or nine months and then lay them off. Maybe someone else has a project for them. They need to change the regulations to take into account the fact that these people could quite possibly work for multiple companies. Now it takes three months to bring them in. If youve got a project starting up, you very often do not have three months. Some way of shortening that process to one or two weeks would be very useful.
With operations in Hollywood, New York, and North Adams, Mass., Kleiser-Walczak has more ability than some to shift people around as projects come and go, but Brown still would like to have the opportunity to make short-term hires. It would be great to be able to bring people in for short-term contract arrangements where we would guarantee certain things like taxes and that theyll go back, she says. And it would be nice if we could start using people while they are going through the process. Now you have to make a real commitment. You have to really think their work is wonderful, that you will be able to work with them and theyll fit into your organization. You cant just hire everybody who looks great.
Digital Domains Plotkin would like to see some of the high-tech requirements for artists lowered. There are some very talented artists who have the innate talent and have the education, but they dont always correlate. Also the processing timeathere is no way to track anything. You just sit there and wait until you are accepted, and thats really difficult for productions that are expecting people to join us. What Id really like to see is a visa based on company need that was shorter term, inexpensive and fast.b
