* Blaming labor shortages, a Microsoft Corp....

* Blaming labor shortages, a Microsoft Corp. executive said that 25% of the new employees it hires in the U.S. in the year ending June 30 will be foreign nationals, many of whom will be foreign college students requiring special visas. The heavy recruitment of foreign nationals comes in the wake of controversial legislation passed last year that nearly doubled to 112,000 the quota for foreigners who are permitted to work in the United States under special H1B visas for “specialty occupations” in which there are insufficient American applicants. Chris Williams, Microsoft’s vice president for Human Resources, said there are not enough trained Americans to fill an estimated 350,000 job openings in the information technology field.