Article snippet: In April, CEOs filed 201,011 H-1B requests to import foreign graduates for work in 2020. But that total is down 15 percent from the 236,000 petitions filed for 2016 workers — even though today’s unemployment numbers are at record lows amid the continued economic growth in President Donald Trump’s “Hire American” economy. “The demand for H-1Bs is pretty static,” a top immigration lawyer admitted to BloombergLaw.com. In fact, the increase may be related to tighter enforcement of the H-1B rules, which gives companies an incentive to make extra requests, said California-based James Pack of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy. The 2019 request, for example, is only up 6 percent from the 190,098 petitions filed in 2018. Each year, 85,000 H-1B visas are allowed for business. Non-profit hospitals, universities and research centers, however, are exempt from the 85,000 cap and usually import 15,000 extra foreign graduates. The tepid growth of the H-1B program from 2016 to 2019 contradicts fervent calls by business leaders for Trump to import more foreign graduates for good jobs that would otherwise be filled by well-paid American graduates, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. He continued: But the slow 2019 growth of the program should not obscure its purpose of sidelining Americans in favor of hiring cheaper visa-workers, said Ron Hira, a professor at Howard University who has closely followed the H-1B program. He told Breitbart News: D... Link to the full article to read more