New York "Suffering" A Foreign Fashion Model Shortage - Holiday Central

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Jun.13

8:51 AM ET

Friday, 13 Jun 2008

New York "Suffering" A Foreign Fashion Model Shortage

Posted By:Margaret Brennan

Topics:Employment | Bill Gates | Fashion

Companies:Microsoft Corp

Fashion Model
AP
Fashion Model
There's a model shortage in the fashion capital of the world and New York Representative Anthony Weiner is working to right that wrong. Seriously.

Weiner is sponsoring a bill that gives models “of distinguished merit and ability” their own visa classification (P-4 status) which would group them with entertainers and athletes.

Believe it or not (might not be hard to believe for those of you who are critical of our visa policies or ever applied for one yourself), models coming to work in the U.S. compete with high-tech workers for the same type of H1-B visa. The problem is that there are only 85,000 available visas and typically 165,000 applicants. In other words, each visa given to Gisele Bundchen, Kate Moss or Naomi Campbell means that one fewer biotech researcher or computer technician can enter the country.

As the competition for visas has gotten tougher in recent years, the number of models granted permission to enter the country has waned. According to Politico.com, ”the government issued between 614 and 790 visas to models in each year between 2000 and 2005. But the number began falling after that, and it was all the way down to 349 in fiscal year 2007.”

So why does Representative Weiner care about this slim piece of immigration reform? Weiner says the lower numbers of foreign models hurts New York commerce. His Brooklyn district and Manhattan receive fewer dollars from industry jobs that would be created by a greater number of shows or fashion shoots.

While some would argue that the current system benefits American models who compete with foreign faces for the same jobs, Weiner says that’s not the case. Advertisers will plan around the desired model’s schedule and move shoots offshore. Even New York City skylines can just be photo shopped into the background of photos taken overseas.