Monday, January 10, 2000 - More on the Quota and H-1B Visa News:
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service will not say how many of its congressionally mandated allotment of 115,000 visas it has granted until it figures out how many the agency issued last year. The INS exceeded the limit, and auditors from KPMG International are trying to determine by how much.
Intel Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and other high-tech companies say the dearth of visas is frustrating their hunt for skilled workers this year. Economists say the shortfalls may prompt companies to raise wages to the point where they also must increase prices.
Stanching the flow of foreign workers ''is certainly not a positive development if you were hoping for some slack to return to the labor force,'' said Kevin Flanagan, an economist with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. in New York. Unemployment in the United States has been at a 30-year low of 4 percent.
''Even at the wages we're paying, we still can't find people in the U.S. to fill these jobs,'' said Heidi Wilson, immigration manager for Sun, which makes computers that run Web sites.
Congress raised the limit on H-1B visas - those reserved for professional workers with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree or higher - to 115,000 for 1999 and 2000 at the urging of high-tech companies. The cap had been 65,000. The new cap nonetheless was reached three months before the 1999 fiscal year ended Sept. 30.
Elaine Komis, an INS spokeswoman, said the agency has yet to reach the cap for fiscal 2000. When it does reach the limit will depend in part on whether the government decides to count the extra visas granted last year as part of the allocation for this year.
Sun hired between 300 and 500 foreign-born software engineers, computer chip designers, and other skilled workers last year, Miss Wilson estimated. The company will have to move jobs to India, she said, if the INS does not grant all Sun's visa applications this year. ''If we can't get them here,'' Miss Wilson said, ''then we're going to have to take the jobs where the talent is.''
Intel, the world's largest maker of computer chips, has already sent eight workers to offices in other countries because the INS has not acted on their visa applications, said Tracy Koon, a company spokeswoman. The chipmaker employs about 1,750 foreign workers holding H-1B visas, and hired 455 of those last year, she said. Intel has about 37,000 workers overall.
''The H-1B cap problem is a problem we run into every year,'' said Rick Miller, a spokesman for Microsoft Corp. ''It certainly affects our ability to recruit and keep the best people.''
Several bills are circulating in Congress to ease the problem. A proposal by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, would eliminate H-1B visa limits until 2006. Another initiative would raise the annual number of visas to 200,000.
