Congress Raises Visa Quota for Tech Workers

Both houses of Congress on Tuesday approved a major expansion of the program that imports skilled foreign workers, responding to pleas for relief from what high-technology companies describe as an acute labor shortage.

President Clinton is expected to sign the bill into law as soon as it is sent to him.

The legislation would allow as many as 195,000 skilled foreign workers to enter the United States annually for the next three years and work under the so-called H-1B visa program. The limit for such visas had been 115,000 in the fiscal year that ended Saturday; without legislative action, that annual quota would drop in fiscal 2001 and ensuing years.

Still awaiting congressional action--and facing uncertain fates--are other immigration measures being pushed by Latino activists.

The Senate vote on the H-1B visa bill was 96 to 1; the House approved it a few hours later on a voice vote. The overwhelming support shows the emerging political muscle of fast-growing industries in the new economy that both major political parties are courting in this presidential election year.

The H-1B program has grown rapidly in the last decade as demand for skilled labor has exploded in California’s Silicon Valley and other high-tech job centers. This year’s quota was exhausted in March. Business leaders, who had won a previous expansion as recently as 1998, made H-1B legislation a top goal this fall.

High-tech lobbyists patrolling Capitol Hill were all smiles after the Senate’s vote. They handed out sheaves of statements from companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. hailing the action.

But the votes came after a bruising partisan fight about the other, unrelated immigration concerns that Latino groups say are crucial to some of the nation’s least powerful people: those in jeopardy of deportation.

The Senate’s GOP leadership refused to let the H-1B visa bill include the Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act, which would help hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals from Latin America and the Caribbean--many of them in the United States illegally and a great number in California--become permanent residents.

That moved congressional Democrats to accuse the Republicans of being insensitive to Latinos--a charge the GOP hotly denied. “Pitiful,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called the Democratic maneuvering. “They have tried to make [the H-1B legislation] into a political brouhaha, which it doesn’t deserve.”

Republicans sought to insulate the foreign worker bill from the volatile politics of immigration, an issue their party is seeking to downplay during the fall campaign. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) used an array of parliamentary tactics to thwart Democratic efforts to add the Latino-related measures as amendments to the visa bill.

At a news conference Tuesday, Latino lawmakers renewed their demands for passage of the fairness act. They introduced people they said would benefit from that measure. One was a woman who is a U.S. citizen but whose husband, a Salvadoran, would be forced to return to his native country to apply for a green card--leaving his family without a breadwinner. Another was a woman who fled Guatemala as a teenager during that country’s political strife in the early 1990s.

Democrats say they have a pledge from Clinton to negotiate with GOP leaders to get the Latino-related measures enacted before Congress adjourns for the year.

In the end, the H-1B legislation won overwhelming bipartisan support. In the Senate, the only dissenter was Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.). Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was among those voting for passage. Missing the vote were Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who is recovering from leg surgery; Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), his party’s vice presidential nominee; and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Advocates say the H-1B program has helped fuel the nation’s economic expansion while not taking jobs away from U.S. workers. They also note that the visas are temporary--good for as long as six years--and that visa holders are supposed to be paid wages prevailing in their industries.

Some critics say that the foreign workers--who come mostly from countries such as India, China and the Philippines--arrive in the United States in hopes of staying permanently but then are stymied in their efforts to get green cards.

The bill approved Tuesday includes a program to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs. But in the near future, business leaders say, there simply are not enough qualified Americans. They warn that some companies could be forced to move operations overseas unless legislation is enacted. Whether that threat is real or not, it has grabbed the attention of many lawmakers.

“Right now, it’s a situation where the jobs are going begging,” said Bob Cohen, senior vice president of the Information Technology Assn. of America, based in Virginia. “There is a pressing need to address the situation. The size of this vote goes to show you that Congress gets it.”

Congress also is getting plenty of high-tech political donations.

The Center for Responsive Politics has found that 325 of the House’s 434 members have received an average of $5,000 from computer-related industries in this election cycle, while 75 of 100 senators report an average contribution of $22,000.

Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), chairman of the House Rules Committee and a leader of theH-1B legislation, said the House’s quick action concerning the measure was fueled by its overwhelming passage in the Senate. “We got a tremendous boost from the Senate action,” Dreier said.