Source:http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/09/foreign-workers-visas-business-banks.html

Business In The Beltway

Foreign Workers Banned From Wall Street

A ''hire American'' provision added to the
stimulus bill is forcing investment banks to rescind job offers made to
highly qualified immigrant workers.

Alice
Su, an M.B.A. student in Wharton Business School's class of 2009 and a
resident of Hong Kong, turned down job offers and interviews because
she'd been offered a coveted spot with the technology group at
investment bank Merrill Lynch. But because of an amendment added to the
stimulus legislation last month by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and
Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., Merrill rescinded its employment offer.

The
stimulus plan forbids banks that have taken Troubled Asset Relief
Program money from hiring foreign workers who require visa sponsorship
if they've laid off workers within the last 90 days. "There is no need
for companies to hire foreign workers ... when there are plenty of
qualified Americans looking for jobs," Grassley said at the time. The
legislation amounts to a blanket ban on the hiring of foreign workers.

"I
grew up internationally between China, Hong Kong and Belgium and worked
in Japan. Nowhere else have I ever experienced this kind of
discrimination," Su says.

A spokeswoman at Bank of America

(nyse:
BAC -

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people
), which now owns Merrill Lynch, confirms that it has rescinded job offers because of the stimulus legislation. JP Morgan Chase

(nyse:
JPM -

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people
)
says it may have to do the same, though it is trying to place students
with job offers in its overseas bureaus. Those positions are mostly
filled already.

Foreign students across some of the top U.S.
business schools are being affected by this change in legislation.
According to the Institute of International Education in New York, of
the 277,000 international students that enrolled for graduate studies
in the fall of 2007, 16.3% were in business and management (including
marketing and accounting). That means roughly 45,000 students are
affected.

Wharton and New York University's Stern School of
Business, both known for traditionally adding to the influx on Wall
Street, confirmed that students in those schools have had their offers
rescinded but wouldn't say how many. At the Tuck School of Business at
Dartmouth, about 36% students out of a class of 480 are from outside
the U.S. Tuck typically sees a third of its student take up jobs in
finance. At the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, about
35% of the current class of 1,144 students is international. From last
year's class, 52% joined financial services.

Neha Khoda, 27, left
India to go to Wharton with the aim of going into investment banking. A
summer internship at Merrill Lynch led to a job offer, until recently.
With two months to graduation and all job offers filled, she doesn't
know what her options are.