In a statement sure to bring the wrath of US job proponents everywhere, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates went a-calling on U.S. Congress today to tell them that the country’s economic future was at sake if they don’t raise the cap on skilled-worker visas, to something closer to 300,000.
Gates told the Senate Health Education Labor and Pension Committee that the country is facing an “acute crisis” in its shortage of engineering professionals and those professionals with the right skills will be guaranteed a good paying job. “The demand worldwide will guarantee them all jobs. Anyone in the United States, not only will they have a high paying job; they will create many around them. We are increasing our employment.”
“It makes no sense to tell well-trained, highly skilled individuals, many of whom are educated at our top colleges and universities, that the United States does not welcome or value them,” Gates said. “America will find it infinitely more difficult to maintain its technological leadership if it shuts out the very people who are most able to help us compete.”
The controversial H-1B program, which tech vendors and other companies use to hire foreign workers, has an annual cap of 65,000 people a year, and the cap is typically reached in the first couple of months the applications are available. Gates said he thought 300,000 would be a better allotment.
These sort of figures fly in the face of reports like the recent Brookings Institute findings that 28 metropolitan areas, representing almost 14% of the nation’s population, are likely to lose a disproportionate amount of jobs — between 3 to 5 % — to offshoring by 2015, with Boulder, CO; Lowell, MA; San Francisco, CA; San Jose, CA; and Stamford, CT taking the hardest hits. Meanwhile Congress is certain to take up the topic again at some point this year experts say. Last year any reforms died on the table before election season.
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