A bill introduced in the U.S. Congress would double the number of immigrant
worker visas available each year under the H-1B program, earning the legislation
praise from Microsoft.

The Innovation Employment Act, introduced by Representative Gabrielle Giffords,
an Arizona Democrat, late Thursday, would increase the cap in H-1B visas from
65,000 a year to 130,000 a year. In addition, there would be no cap on H-1B
applications for foreign graduate students attending U.S. colleges and studying
science, technology and related fields. Currently, there's a 20,000-a-year cap
on visas for graduate students in all fields.

The legislation would increase the H-1B cap to 180,000 in 2010 to 2015 if the
130,000 cap is reached the year before.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates called for an increase in the H-1B visa cap while
testifying before the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee
Wednesday. In recent years, the H-1B cap has been filled days -- or even the
same day -- after the government opened the application period.

"We provide the world's best universities ... and the students are not
allowed to stay and work in the country," Gates said Wednesday. "The
fact is, [other countries'] smartest people want to come here and that's a huge
advantage to us, and in a sense, we're turning them away."

Microsoft praised Giffords' bill. The legislation "would boost America's
competitiveness by giving U.S. employers the flexibility they need to hire the
best talent available to fill a severe shortage of qualified U.S. high-skilled
workers," Jack Krumholtz, management director of federal government affairs
for Microsoft, said in a statement. The bill would also increase U.S. jobs;
Microsoft hires an additional four people to support each H-1B worker, Krumholtz
said.

The U.S. government will begin accepting visa applications for next year in
April, and Microsoft predicted the cap would be filled the same day, as it was
in 2007. "The current system effectively prevents American companies from
hiring this year's foreign-born university graduates," Krumholtz added.

The Giffords' bill would also increase penalties for H-1B fraud and allows
the U.S. Department of Labor to reject H-1B applications for "clear indicators
of fraud," in addition the current rule of rejecting only applications
that are inaccurate or incomplete. The bill puts important safeguards on the
H-1B program in place, said C.J. Karamargin, a spokesman for Giffords.

The bill would prohibit companies from hiring H-1B workers, then outsourcing
them to other companies, he said. H-1B opponents have complained that outsourcing
companies are among the top users of H-1B visas.

The legislation would also prohibit companies with more than 50 employees that
have more than half of their staff as H-1B workers from hiring more H-1Bs, and
it would prohibit employers from advertising jobs as available only to H-1B
workers, Karamargin said. "The bill would put some teeth in the Department
of Labor's oversight role" of the program, he said.

Giffords sees the importance of H-1Bs because Southern Arizona has been growing
as a hub for tech companies, Karamargin added. "There's a need to stay
competitive and keep the momentum growing," he added. "That means
making sure the talent is available to drive the local and national tech economy."

But despite some attempts at addressing H-1B fraud, Giffords' bill would do
little to address worker concerns about the program, said Ron Hira, a public
policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and former chairman
of the Career and Workforce Policy Committee at the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers-USA.

"This bill takes none of the concerns raised by American technology workers
seriously," Hira said. He called the bill a "massive" increase
in the H-1B cap.

"This bill will basically do nothing to stem employers from using the
H-1B program as a source of cheap labor and to substitute for American workers,"
Hira said. "It doesn't require any kind of labor market test -- demonstrating
that a shortage actually exists before hiring an H-1B."

The bill doesn't fix "serious problems" in setting wage floors for
H-1B workers, Hira added. "No matter how one dresses up this bill, it would
do nothing to curb the practice of companies bringing in computer programmers
for $12 per hour to displace U.S. workers," he said. "If this bill
were to be passed as written, it would do serious damage to the American information
technology labor market, displacing many American workers, discouraging the
next generation of students from entering the career, and speed up the offshoring
of high-wage high-technology jobs."

IDG News Service

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