Agency Chafes at Ban on Hiring Foreign Specialists

The Congressional Budget Office has reiterated a previous request for an exception to a law forbidding agency hiring of job candidates with non-immigrant visas for technical positions that are not easily filled.

In a submission to the Senate Budget Committee posted Tuesday on CBO’s blog, Director Keith Hall and his team described the agency’s fiscal 2016 request to the Senate Appropriations Committee that it be granted permission to hire employees with non-immigrant visas for certain jobs and be allowed to keep half of its unused appropriations for use in fiscal 2017.

Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., at a May hearing had asked why CBO had gone through appropriations rather than the authorization process run by his committee. He asked for the budgetary impact of an exception, and whether CBO has a list of appropriations bill provisions that affect the nonpartisan agency’s budget-scoring operations.

The 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act changed a long-standing practice that allowed CBO and other agencies to use appropriated funds to employ “nationals of those countries allied with the United States in a current defense effort.” The change limited the candidate pool to people “lawfully admitted for permanent residence and [who are] seeking citizenship.”

Since 2012, CBO has sought an exception, saying it had “struggled to fill crucial Ph.D. economist positions with people having skills in econometrics and financial modeling.” The small pool of citizens and permanent residents is “slightly less than half of recent graduates from Ph.D. economics programs in the United States,” it said.

Granting CBO an exception “would not significantly affect the budget,” it said.

The reason for using the appropriations process, CBO said, is that the general governmentwide provision affecting hiring is contained in an appropriations bill, and past appropriations bills have addressed CBO operations.

The agency-provided list of appropriations provisions affecting CBO operations included such measures as helping valuable employees pay off their student loans and setting the director’s pay at a level equal to the highest paid officers in the House and Senate.

The ability to hold over the admittedly small amount of $50,000, CBO said, would allow it to “make fuller use” of 2016 monies and perhaps reduce its request for fiscal 2017.

(Image via baranq / Shutterstock.com)