Note, McCain admits (again) below that he wants mass amnesty next year. Obama of course wants mass amnesty too.
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pcmag.com

The Top Tech Issues of the Presidential Campaign
H-1B VISAS

Clinton: Supports an increase in the cap on H-1B visas, but pushed for "using the funds raised from the price of these visas to train Americans."

McCain: Supports an increase in the number of H-1B visas.

Obama: Wants to overhaul entire immigration system, produce more American-born technology workers, and create a system that makes workers less dependent on their employers.

Immigration reform has sparked heated debates in Congress, but a subset of that issue is the issuance of H-1B visas, which allow foreigners with specialized skills to work in the United States for a certain amount of time. The U.S. only issues 65,000 of these visas annually, however, and they are usually snapped up immediately. The number of H-1B visas issued annually dropped in late 2003 from 195,000 to 65,000. At the time, there was concern that foreign workers were taking American jobs and bills in the House and Senate pushed for a decrease the number of visas issued. The quota was actually at 65,000 throughout the 1990's, but the government never reached that cap until 1997. It was later increased to accommodate the growing demand.

Tech companies in particular have been calling on Congress to increase the number of visas so they can recruit talented workers from overseas or snap up foreign-born students after they graduate from masters or doctoral programs at U.S. universities.

"Last year, Microsoft was unable to obtain H-1B visas for one-third of the highly qualified foreign-born job candidates that we wanted to hire," chairman Bill Gates told Congress in March.

A number of bills to again increase the cap on H-1Bs are floating around Congress, but prospects for action look dim.

All the major candidates agree that change is needed.

"The status quo is not satisfactory," McCain said during his visit to Google's headquarters ( "We got to make sure that young people all over the world who want to come to our country and are qualified to … study in our best institutions have the opportunity to do so."

"I support increases in H-1B visas," McCain told MahaloDaily.com earlier this year. "I believe that real immigration reform probably will not come until 2009. There's just too much gridlock in Washington on the issue. But it'll be one of my highest priorities to sit down, Repbulican and Democrat, and we work out what is a federal responsibility – not a state or local responsibility – to enact comprehsnive immigration reform, beginning with securing our borders."

Obama is pushing for an overhaul of the entire immigration system so that "immigrants who earn their degrees in the U.S. [can] stay, work, and become Americans over time."

But "most H-1B new arrivals … have earned a bachelor's degree or its equivalent abroad," Obama said. "They are not all Ph.Ds. We can and should produce more Americans with bachelor's degrees that lead to jobs in technology."

He pushed for a system that would make workers "less dependent on their employers for their right to stay in the country and would hold accountable employers who abuse the system and their workers."

Clinton has a similar outlook. In a video presentation for the Indian Institute of Technology's (IIT) 2007 Global Alumni Conference, Clinton said she supports an increase in the cap on H-1B visas, but pushed for "using the funds raised from the price of these visas to train Americans."

"While I believe we should work together to support more visas for high-skilled workers, we should also do what we can to make sure Americans fill a lot of these middle-class jobs of the future," she said.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2316839,00.asp