H-1B visa plan hits a wall

Despite all the hullabaloo early this year, it appears that the move to increase the number of H-1B visas is dead in the water -- for now anyway.

Congress will recess tomorrow so its members can go home and campaign to their constituents -- in some cases, to try to get reelected -- without having addressed the issue.

The inaction on this topic is a far cry from the frenzy of activity that took place around the H-1B issue earlier this year. In June the Senate approved a motion that would increase the number of H-1B visa workers allowed in the United States at any one time from 65,000 to 115,000 and would let that number grow higher if the threshold was met.

Proponents hailed the bill. “The Senate took a critical step forward in its important work to ensure that our nation remains the global leader in technology innovation,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chief software architect. Intel have for years called for a higher H-1B cap.

In fact a Washington Post article today says that at Microsoft, H-1B and Green Card reform has emerged as the “top legislative priority right now,” according to Jack Krumholtz, the company’s managing director for federal government affairs. “We are really at a crisis in terms of the industry’s ability to hire the best and the brightest and retain them,” he says.

The problem this year is that the H1-B provision got bogged down in the overarching and even more controversial immigration law reform.  Because this is a critical midterm election year, controversial topics tend to get pushed under the rug. And any immigration issues are one of this year’s avoidable bugaboos, say experts.

For now, the impression is that the larger issues of immigration will be revisited when Congress returns in November. But with that lame duck session, important issues such as this may not be addressed.