Is the latest Obama initiative, TechHire, just an end run to justify more H1-B visas?

In a word - yes.  It's disgusting and cynical but it will give the tech companies exactly what they want, cheap immobile labor.  It will also allow the White House to claim to be doing something to expand the middle class, even though it will do nothing of the sort.

If you aren't familiar with it TechHire is an initiative announced by the White House today.  As part of this initiative a number of cities and states as well as Tech companies such as Microsoft, and training companies have agreed to partner to train tech workers to fill the 545,000 tech jobs that the administration claims are out there.

This program is problematic in a couple ways:

First, although the announcement claims that jobs are going unfilled in Software Development, Network Management, and Cybersecurity all the training is directed at software development.  To me this would indicate that despite their claims of being data driven, the administrators of this program don't really know what training is needed - "There are lots of online coding course out there so let's make everyone a developer".  Those also tend to be the jobs that are outsourced of filled by H1-Bs.

Second, It appears no one is really sure where the 545,000 unfilled jobs number came from. According to one expert the number of unfilled IT jobs is closer to 60,000 and many of those are not entry level positions which would benefit from this program.    The thing is 60,000 unfilled positions is less than the number and authorized H1-B visas and wouldn't justify and expansion of the program. 545,000 however is about three times the authorized number of H1-Bs.  Cool how that works out.

Third, we already have tech workers who can't get hired.  In fact a number of studies have shown that there is no shortage of tech workers.  There is s shortage of jobs or employers willing to hire Americans.

So why this program and why now?  Simply put it's Silicon Valley's last chance to push through immigration reform and greatly increase the number of H1-B visas.  The trade-off is that they have to look like they are doind something to improve job opportunities for Americans.  It doesn't really matter if they are or not.  It's only $100,000,000 or 200 dollars per potential H1-B visa.  they will make that up in the first week after hiring someone.