H-1B backers want bigger increase in cap

Computerworld - The 20,000-visa increase that Congress added to the fiscal 2005 H-1B cap just before its holiday break left no one involved in the contentious issue happy, and IT trade groups said they will try to further raise the cap next year.
The proposed legislation, which was included in the omnibus federal budget bill approved over the weekend prior to Thanksgiving, would allow foreign nationals with master's and Ph.D. degrees from U.S. universities to apply for H-1B visas during the government's current fiscal year.
The current cap of 65,000 visas was reached on Oct. 1, the first day of the fiscal year.
Trade groups and IT vendors such as Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. had urged Congress to raise the fiscal 2005 cap, as had technology users such as The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Despite the vote to do so, some H-1B proponents said that the legislators didn't go far enough.
The number of additional H-1B visas needed this year "is closer to 50,000," said John Palafoutas, a senior vice president at the AEA, a Washington-based trade group. Large numbers of students graduating from U.S. universities with advanced degrees in fields such as computer science are foreign nationals. Proponents of the cap increase argue that it's in the nation's best interest to keep these skilled graduates here and that an H-1B visa is a path to permanent residency.
But opponents say that's not necessarily the case.
Path to Green Card?
Many employers "don't use the H-1B visa to bring people into the U.S. and keep them here," said Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. Often, IT services firms simply need to add workers at customer sites, according to Hira. "They're not trying to sponsor people for green cards," he said.
That's true at Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., a Mumbai, India-based IT services firm with operations worldwide. Tata has about 8,000 employees in North America, primarily in the U.S., and about 7,200 of them are here on some kind of visa. Among its U.S. workers, about 65% have H-1Bs, and the remainder hold L-1 visas, said spokesman Victor Chayet.
He added that many of Tata's U.S.-based employees are graduates of universities in India and that only a handful ever seek permanent residency here. The company doesn't discourage workers from applying for green cards, but its service delivery model is based on the ability to move people from country to country as needed. "Keeping that fluid workforce is to our benefit,"Chayet said.
Groups representing high-tech workers opposed any increase in this year's H-1B cap. Al Gray, executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers in Alexandria, Va., said current indications are that there "are no really serious shortages" of engineering and IT workers.
But Joanna Smith Bers, managing director of DB Marketing Technologies LLC, a consulting firm in New York, said she has had trouble finding job candidates from U.S. schools who have strong math and statistics training and who understand business.
"I would like nothing better than to hire Americans for these positions," she said. "My challenge is that the people who have the education and the background are coming from abroad."

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