The H-1B Controversy.

• Author: MASON, LAURIE
• Position: Foreign worker visas

A YEAR AGO DINESH GHANDI, with a master's degree in computer science and six years of experience as a programmer, went looking for a job in the high-tech industry. He posted his resume on various job Web sites. "To be frank I got a lot of responses," says Ghandi, 33. No surprise there. At the time, the computer industry was begging for skilled programmers.

The only thing that seemed to stand between Ghandi and his dream job was his American citizenship. "I look like an H-1B visa person, and they called me up because of my name," the native of India explains. "Then they asked me, 'What is your status?' and I said, 'I am a U.S. citizen." Once companies learned that, he said they stopped calling. "It made me frustrated because I went all through the interviews, and then my final [citizenship] status comes into the picture."

Ghandi says this happened with three different companies before he finally landed a good job as a programming manager at a biotech firm. Further, he knows the people who were hired with the other companies he'd interviewed with, knows his skills were equal to theirs, and knows they were hired on H-1 B visas.

WORKER SHORTAGE

In October 2000, calling it a short-term solution to a shortage of American high-tech workers, President Clinton signed a law increasing the annual cap of foreign worker visas (H-lBs) from 115,000 to 195,000 for three years. The H-lB visa law, which allows foreign workers to come to the United States to work for up to six years, was in direct response to cries from the high-tech industry that they could not compete unless they had more employees to choose from.

"As the U.S. economy comes to depend more heavily on information technology, the availability of skilled workers becomes increasingly important to the nation," said Alan Merten, president of George Mason University, commenting in a press release on a congressional report from the National Research Council. While the report, which Merten wrote, titled "Building a Workforce for the Information Economy" was meant to help Congress decide how to vote on the H-lB visa bill, it didn't meet its deadline. But it nonetheless supported changes to the government's policies on foreign workers. "The labor market for these workers is unquestionably tight, and all sources of talent--both domestic and foreign--are needed to address this problem."

Jeff Lande, a vice president with the Information Technology Association of America, a trade association representing information technology corporations, was the lead lobbyist in favor of raising the H-lB visa cap. He says the industry has exploded and the number of qualified...