BofA withdraws job offers to foreign MBAs

BofA withdraws job offers to foreign MBAs

By Della Bradshaw in London

Published: March 9 2009 00:07 | Last updated: March 9 2009 00:07

Bank of America has become the first US bank to withdraw job offers made to MBA students graduating from US business schools this summer, citing conditions laid out in its bail-out deal as the reason.

The recently passed $787bn stimulus bill in effect prevents financial institutions that have received money from the government’s troubled asset relief programme from applying for H1-B visas for highly skilled immigrants if they have recently made US workers redundant.

BofA, which has received a total of $45bn in Tarp funds, is in the process of digesting two large acquisitions – Countrywide, the mortgage broker, and Merrill Lynch – which will see thousands of jobs lost.

A spokesman for the bank said: “Recent changes in legislation made it necessary for Bank of America to rescind job offers it had made to students requiring H-1B sponsorship.”

The number of international students affected by the BofA move is thought to be no more than 50 but business schools are concerned that other banks could follow suit.

Traditionally, about a third of MBA students at the leading US schools have taken up finance and banking jobs on graduation, with about a third of those MBAs coming from outside the US.

Some supporters of freer migration have criticised the Tarp measure for threatening to cut the US off from foreign talent and encouraging tit-for-tat retaliation by other countries.

One concern for business school deans is that students who have traditionally studied in the US may go elsewhere. “There might be an inclination for people from around the world to vote with their feet,” says David Schmittlein, dean of MIT’s Sloan school of management in Boston.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

It's got nothing to do with TARP, it's been US immigration law for some time that if you've laid people off, you can't hire people using H-1B in similar jobs, it was the "Protect US Workers Act" or something like that awhile back.

My understanding was that recipients of TARP funds were required to follow the same rules as H-1B dependent employers (those in which H-1Bs make up 15% of more of the company's total workforce), which includes the provision about not hiring H-1Bs within a certain time frame if a US worker has been laid off for the same position. I don't think it applies to other employers though. (I could be wrong.) Either way it sounds like they will be regulating and scrutinizing H-1Bs more and more in the months (and years) to come.