Immigration Attorney
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Tuesday, October 03, 2000 - Congress Passes H-1B Visa Bill

By Donna Smith

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress on Tuesday voted to increase the number of visas available for skilled foreign workers to help high-tech companies facing a severe shortage of applicants with the skills they need.

On a 96-1 vote in the Senate and a voice vote in the House, lawmakers agreed to increase the number of H-1B temporary visas available for high-tech workers from India and other countries.

The two bodies approved the same measure, sending it on to President Clinton.

Despite strong support, the legislation has been caught up in election-year politics and efforts to woo Hispanic voters.

Democrats in both chambers sought to add broader immigration amendments to grant amnesty to some long-term illegal aliens and address the legal status of immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti and Liberia.

White House spokeswoman Nanda Chitre, traveling with Clinton in Miami, said the president was disappointed the bill did not include the immigration provisions.

``The president strongly supports passage of balanced H-1B legislation,'' she said. ``In addition, the president will continue to strongly insist on passage of the Latino and Immigrant Fairness Act this year, before Congress adjourns.''

Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, said it was ``a great day for the high tech industry,'' adding that he hoped the overwhelming support for the bill in Congress would encourage Clinton to sign it.

Democratic efforts to add the measures were thwarted in the Senate by Republicans who accused the minority party of playing election-year politics with the issue. Last week, Democrats shifted gears and said they would fight the broader immigration issues on another bill, clearing the way for final passage of the H-1B visa bill.

``This H-1B legislation is crucial to the high technology industry in my home state ... and almost every other state in the union,'' said Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The legislation will raise the number of visas available for highly skilled workers to 195,000 per year for the next three years.

Without the increase, the number of visas available annually under current law would fall to 65,000 from the 115,000 that were available in 2000 and exhausted in March.

The legislation will allow visa requests filed before Sept. 1 to be counted toward 2000 so that 195,000 visas will be available for fiscal 2001, which began Oct. 1.

It would also provide more money, to be funded by higher visa application fees, to help with job training and education programs to improve the skills of American workers.

The bill does not include the fee increase to $1,000 from the current $500, but Rep. David Dreier, a California Republican, said he was introducing separate legislation in the House that will provide for the increase. The fee increase is considered a revenue measure, which must originate in the House.

Sen. Spencer Abraham, a Michigan Republican, said the education funding provided in the legislation will help ensure a skilled work force in the long run, while the extra foreign worker visas will help maintain the U.S. economic boom in the short run.

``Clearly over the next decade, the number of new positions in these industries that will be created is going to far outpace anything that high-tech worker visas can keep up with,'' Abraham said.