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  1. #1
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    Senators questioning tech company use of H1-B visa program

    Senators questioning tech company use of H1-B visa program

    http://origin.insidebayarea.com/sanmate ... ci_5894305

    By Suzanne Gamboa
    Associated Press
    Article Last Updated: 05/14/2007 04:01:19 PM PDT

    WASHINGTON - Two senators are questioning several companies - including firms in Fremont and Mountain View - about their use of a visa program for highly skilled workers.

    Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said they are focusing on nine companies, several of them foreign-based, that used nearly 20,000 of the 75,000 H-1B visas that were available last year.

    H-1B visas are for high-skilled workers and are heavily used in the high-tech industry.

    "I continue to hear how people want to increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to companies," Grassley said in a news release. "Considering the high amount of fraud and abuse in the visa program, we need to take a good, hard look at the employers who are using H-1B visas and how they are using them."

    Grassley and Durbin, both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee, sent letters to the nine companies asking several questions about their visa use, wages and layoffs.

    The top users were identified with statistics from Citizenship and Immigration Services, the senators said.

    The letters, posted on Grassley's Web site, were addressed to Infosys Technologies Ltd. in Fremont, Calif.; Wipro Limited, Mountain View, Calif.; Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Arlington, Va.; Saytam Computer Services Ltd., Andhra Pradesh, India; Patni Computer Systems, Mumbai, India; Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd., Mumbai, India; I-Flex Solutions Inc., Mumbai, India; Tech Mahindra Americas Inc., Englewood, Colo.; and Mphasis Corp., Bangalore, India.

    Under federal law, 65,000 H-1B visas are available each year for workers in specialty fields such as computer programmers, engineers, architects, accountants, doctors, college professors and fashion models.

    Another 20,000 visas are available for foreign workers with at least a master's degree from a U.S. college or university. The numbers do not include current H-1B visa holders. Federal law sets requirements for H-1B holders' salaries.

    The high-tech industry has long complained that too few visas are available. Microsoft Corp. is among a group of companies that has pushed for increasing the available visas. This year, the limit for applications for the visas was reached in record time.

    "Collecting information is fine, but we think abuse of the system is the exception rather than the rule," said Eric Thomas, a spokesman for Compete America, a coalition that includes Microsoft, chip maker Intel Corp., business software company Oracle Corp. and others.

    Increasing U.S. competitiveness by providing more visas for skilled workers has been a key issue in congressional efforts to craft a comprehensive immigration bill. At least two bills have been filed that would increase available H-1B visas to 115,000 a year.

  2. #2
    Senior Member swatchick's Avatar
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    I know MicroSoft goes to the University of Waterloo in Canada to recruit. Bill Gates would show up on a regular basis. That university is the top one for computer and engineering degrees. I wonder which jobs MicroSoft hires for? I know that a friend was taking computer programming and changed majors as there are very few programming positions in this country. The only reason he has a job as a programmer is because the company he deals with has their programmers in one of the former Soviet Union countries and he speaks Russian and can therefore communicate with them. If it weren't for his language skills he would not have a job.
    I don't have a problem with people getting visas if there really aren't enough Americans to do the job. Abusing it would be wrong.
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