Immigration Law

The Dallas Morning News had an interesting article yesterday about the tech industry lobbying to raise the cap on H-1B visas. Here are a few excerpts:

High-tech workers here on federal permits are speaking out ? many for the first time ? over rules that leave them for years in personal and professional limbo.

After Congress failed to reform immigration laws for the second year in a row, hundreds of the largely India- and China-born workers protested this summer in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. They were frustrated that the divisive debate over illegal immigration had overwhelmed efforts at comprehensive immigration reform.

Legal immigrants who feel squeezed by limits on the number of green cards issued each year are trying to separate their complaints from the protests by illegal immigrants. And high-tech companies that say they can't fill jobs because of a cap on skilled-worker visas have stepped up their long-standing plea for the cap to be raised.

The green card application system is akin to "indentured servitude," said Kim Berry, president of the Programmers' Guild, a group that opposes current work visa laws. "It takes years for the green card sponsorship to happen, and they can't leave, can't ask for a raise unless they want to lose their place in line."

Applications for work-related green cards ? limited to 140,000 each year, about 9,800 per sending country ? are backlogged so deep that many immigrants must plod along for years, uncertain about their future in the United States and unable to change jobs while they wait for permanent residence.

And immigration officials resorted to a lottery for H1-B work visas this summer when businesses filed ? on just the first day the government was accepting applications ? double the number that could be considered the whole year. Three years ago, it took 10 months for businesses to fill the annual quota.

More than 1 million foreign nationals were in line for permanent residency in 2006. More than 500,000 came into the U.S. on H1-Bs, and the rest through family connections.

Microsoft Corp. was the third-largest sponsor of H1-B visas in the last federal fiscal year. But it still didn't get all the foreign workers it wanted into the country. The company's government affairs director said this was one motivation for Microsoft to open a new software development center in Canada.

"We currently do 85 percent of our development work in the U.S., and we'd like to continue doing that," said Jack Krumholtz. "But if we can't hire the developers we need ... we're going to have to look to other options to get the work done."

About 8 percent of Mountain View-based Google Inc.'s employees currently work under H1-B visas. This year, the company posted 70 new foreign hires overseas when they couldn't get visas. They'll try again next year.

Smaller companies, which may need only one foreign worker, argue they suffer most under the visa cap because they don't have the flexibility of the giants in the field.