Skip Links

Network World

  • Social Web 
  • Email 
  • Close

House bill seeks to more than double H-1B visa cap

By Patrick Thibodeau , Computerworld , 03/22/2007

Legislation seeking to hike the federal government's annual cap on H-1B visas from the current limit of 65,000 to as many as 180,000 was introduced in the U.S. House Thursday, in what likely will be the start of another push in Congress to allow more technology workers into the U.S.

The H-1B proposal, which is part of a wider immigration reform bill co-sponsored by Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), also would do more than raise the visa cap. The measure seeks to remove all limits on issuing visas to foreign nationals who have advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math from U.S. universities.

Advanced degree holders can already be issued visas on top of the regular H-1B cap, but the number of extra visas made available for them is limited to 20,000 in a single government fiscal year.

In addition, the legislation would exempt foreign workers with "extraordinary ability" in certain areas, including science and business, from some of the requirements for obtaining green cards that give them permanent residency status in the U.S. That provision is aimed at making it easier for such workers to obtain the cards.

Other bills related to the guest worker program may also be introduced in the House this year, and Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have been working on an immigration reform bill of their own.

The Gutierrez-Flake bill is called the STRIVE Act of 2007, for Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy. If approved, it would increase the H-1B visa cap to 115,000 per fiscal year. And if that limit was reached, the bill would allow for automatic increases to as much as 180,000 visas based on market demand.

High-tech companies and trade groups have been pushing Congress to increase the H-1B cap for the past two years. Earlier this month, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, as the sole witness at a hearing on U.S. competitiveness, and called for an increase in the H-1B cap and an expedited green card process for highly skilled workers.

Compete America, a Washington-based group that includes IT vendors, trade associations and universities and is lobbying for an H-1B cap increase, Thursday praised the visa-related provisions in the legislation introduced by Gutierrez and Flake.

Partner Content

NetScout is one of the world's premier providers of integrated network and application performance solutions.

www.netscout.com

Know First

Get Proactive — Move from Troubleshooting to Monitoring to Management with nGenius K2's Service Dashboard & Intelligent Early Warning Alarms

Watch the Video

Know Where

Get Rapid Performance Problem Isolation with nGenius Performance Manager and Diagnose Problems up to 70% Faster!

Learn More

Know Why

Get the Details to Validate and Solve your Toughest Performance Issues with nGenius InfiniStream and Sniffer Intelligence Modules

Read the Whitepaper

Comments (1)
Login
Forgot your account info?

House bill seeks to more than double H-1B visa capBy Anonymous on March 26, 2007, 11:14 pmIncreasing the H1-B is just like getting slaves. These big companies would normally hire people from outside and would bring them here on cheap salaries. These...

Reply | Read entire comment

View all comments

Add comment
Anonymous comments subject to moderator approval. Register here for member benefits.
Have a NetworkWorld account? Log in here. Register now for a free account.

Videos

rssRss Feed
Save The Date!
What They Are Saying

If the IT manager is knowledgeable regarding Cisco technology, he would have 2 options. Option 1 - Consult...- Anonymous

Join the Discussion