TPT July 2007

From the AmericaS

or permanent-resident green cards, is a very vocal advocate for reform of the visa system in favour of highly educated foreign professionals. Although they are a hard sell to lawmakers answerable to constituents worried about the loss of American jobs, Mr Gates’s views may be gaining traction. Compete America, the Washington-based ‘coalition for a competitive workforce’, includes among its 200 members Microsoft, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the US Chamber of Commerce. It came out fighting on April 2, date of the ‘unprecedented announcement’ that the 2008 allotment of H-1B visas was met on the very first day applications were accepted. Robert E Hoffman, a vice president of the business software company Oracle and co-chairman of Compete America, said in a statement, “Our broken visa policies for highly educated foreign professionals are not only counterproductive – they are anticompetitive and detrimental to America’s long-term economic competitiveness.”

Immigration Quota on US visas for high-tech guest workers is filled in a day The federal agency Citizenship and Immigration Services began accepting petitions for skilled-worker visas for the fiscal year starting October 1, and by mid-afternoon of April 2 had received about 150,000 applications. Because Congress has mandated a limit on the coveted H-1B visas to 65,000 annually, the agency halted the application process and said it would employ randomized computer selection to fill the quota from among the applications in hand. The rejects would be returned and filing fees refunded. There are a few ways around the cap on the coveted visas for foreign workers with high-technology skills or in specialty occupations. It is not imposed on petitions for extensions by current H-1B holders, and an additional 20,000 visas are open to applicants who hold advanced degrees from American academic institutions. But many American employers of scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and other workers with analytical or technical expertise consider the exclusions derisory and the cap itself a harmful anachronism. Bill Gates, whose Microsoft Corp alone has an estimated 15,000 employees in the US holding work visas

Dorothy Fabian , Features Editor (USA)

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J uly /A ugust 2007