April 5, 2007 Firms urge more visas for skilled foreign workers

Immigration officials receive 150,000 applications for 65,000 spots on the first day.

By Anna Gorman
Times Staff Writer

High-tech firms and other businesses are urging Congress to increase the number of visas available for skilled foreign workers after immigration officials announced this week that the 65,000 visa cap was reached within hours.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received more than 150,000 H-1B petitions Monday, the first day companies could submit applications for potential workers. Applications received Tuesday have not been tallied.

Officials will conduct a computerized lottery of the applications from both days and inform the applicants of results. Because of the high number of petitions, the drawing will not be held for several weeks, officials said.

"It's just nuts," said Los Angeles immigration attorney Carl Shusterman, who sent his clients' H-1B applications by FedEx on Friday. "Sixty-five thousand as a cap is just an artificial number that was agreed to by Congress years ago. It is not in sync with the labor market."

The visa cap was reached more quickly than ever before, said Sharon Rummery, an immigration spokeswoman. Visas ran out in May last year and in August in 2005.

The six-year visas are given to skilled foreign workers, including engineers, architects, computer programmers and scientists. Companies must agree to pay the H-1B workers the prevailing wage. Visa recipients can begin work in October.

An additional 20,000 visas are available for workers who receive master's degrees or higher in the United States. Rummery said she did not know whether that cap had been reached because those applications were mixed in with the H-1B pool.

U.S. companies pushing for more visas say there is a shortage of some highly skilled workers, making it necessary for them to recruit outside the country.

Skyworks Solutions, which develops and manufactures integrated circuits for cellphones, applied for dozens of H-1B visas. Connie Williams, senior human resources specialist at the company's Irvine office, said it was time to change the law.

"This is not about whether somebody is going to come across the border to wash dishes," Williams said. "It's about the hard-core sciences."

The fact that many applicants won't get visas will mean a talent shortage for her company, she said.

"That is going to be true for every company in the U.S. in the tech sector," she said.

Attorney Mitchell Wexler, who represents Skyworks and other firms, said Wednesday that his clients were waiting anxiously for the lottery results. His Irvine office rushed to submit about 500 H-1B applications by Monday.

"My corporate clients are up in arms," he said. "They clearly need these workers. They are not trying to get these workers on the cheap."

Reps. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) have proposed legislation that would increase the H-1B visa cap to 115,000 and exempt from the cap some individuals who have earned advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math in the United States.

Under the legislation, the H-1B cap could be increased in subsequent years to 180,000.

Not everyone supports H-1B visas. Some companies have complained that foreigners are taking jobs from Americans.

Another proposed bill, by Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), would limit the number of H-1B employees some companies could hire and would require employers to pledge that they had made good-faith efforts to hire American workers.

But Robert Hoffman, a vice president at Oracle, said he was hopeful that immigration reforms would be passed this year to allow U.S. companies to recruit more foreigners. Hoffman co-chairs Compete America, a coalition of about 25 mostly high-tech businesses that is pushing for more H-1B visas.

He said there was an entire graduating class of highly educated foreign students, many of whom attended U.S. schools, who were "essentially shut out of the U.S. job market."

"It doesn't send them a very positive message if we hand them a diploma but simultaneously tell them we don't have a place for you in our economy," Hoffman said.