[Note that here Clinton opposes an H-1B increase.]

New York Times

August 31, 1999



By JERI CLAUSING


Bills Reopen Debate Over Visa Limit


WASHINGTON - Just one year after the high-tech industry won a tough
political fight to hire more skilled foreign workers, Republican leaders are
re-igniting the contentious debate that some say underscores the need for
more permanent immigration reforms.


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The Clinton Administration remains opposed to any further increase in
temporary visas for educated workers, saying the industry needs to focus on
training people domestically to meet its employment needs. But no one is
dismissing the chance that new legislation to raise the number of so-called
H1-B visas could pass after Congress returns from a monthlong recess next
week, particularly as Republicans and Democrats compete to be seen as the
party most friendly to the high-tech industry.


Just before Congress headed out for its August break, three bills were filed
to allow companies to hire more foreign workers on temporary visas.
Proposals by Senator Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican, and Representative
David Dreier, a California Republican, would nearly double the number of
H1-B visas reserved for skilled workers, to 200,000 from 115,000.


Additionally, Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat who represents
California's Silicon Valley, has filed a bill that would create a new class
of visas for foreign students with science degrees, which would be in
addition to the H1-B visas high-tech companies now rely on.


Meanwhile, Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who is running for
President, said he intends to file another bill in September that would
increase the visa cap to 175,000 a year and give the U.S. Labor Secretary
the authority to raise the limit beyond that if necessary.


Those proposals come just a year after Congress raised the cap on H1-Bs from
65,000 -- despite accusations that companies were using the visas to hire
cheap, young foreign workers to replace more experienced Americans who have
been hit by layoffs.


High-tech companies and major trade groups like the Information Technology
Association of America said they would welcome any and all of the bills, but
they have so far declined to enter the debate on Capitol Hill.


Five companies turned down invitations to testify at a hearing of the House
Immigration Subcommittee just before the Congress's summer break. Those
close to the process say high-tech companies are waiting and watching,
because they are hesitant to reenter what turned into one of the industry's
toughest political battles last year, and because they have been focusing
this year on several other key items. Leading the industry's agenda are
efforts to pass legislation limiting high-tech companies' liability in the
event of Year 2000 equipment failures and winning a permanent extension of a
tax credit for research and development.


Renee Winsky, a vice president of the ITAA, said she was unsure what
prompted the new round of proposals, which began with an announcement
earlier this summer by Gramm during a visit to Texas Instruments. She said
none of her members have even called to suggest that the ITAA push the
issue.


Although she contends more visas are needed, Winsky said that for now, she
is working to develop longer-term solutions for what the industry says is a
critical worker shortage.


"Certainly, we are not going to come out in opposition to something that
helps our members' companies," Winsky said. "But everyone knows that
long-term, we have to look at employment immigration. We have a skills gap,
we have a gap in our workforce that's not going to be fixed by just
increasing the visas for three years."


"This is something that's not going to go away with last year's increase or
anything that is going to pass this year."


The proposals come just a year after Congress approved increasing the cap on
H1-Bs to 115,000 from 65,000 after a tough battle with the White House that
finally resulted in a compromise that added an application fee for the H1-B
visas to finance domestic training programs. But because that battle dragged
on for months longer than anticipated, it created a backlog of visa
applications from 1998 that resulted in this year's cap being hit early as
well. Likewise, officials fear that the backlog of applications now piling
up will mean that next year's limit will also be reached early.


But with the new bills comes a renewed debate over whether there really is a
critical shortage of skilled Americans capable of filling openings in the
fast-growing information technology sector, or whether the companies are
just trying to keep wages down.


To address questions about wages, last year's bill called for better record
keeping on the salaries being paid H1-B recipients, but the new procedures
are not yet in place. That means no federal agency yet has an accurate count
of how much H1-B workers are being paid. And studies from the Department of
Commerce and Department of Labor have been unable to prove conclusively that
there is a high-tech labor shortage.


Additionally, testimony at House Immigration Subcommittee hearings this year
have raised questions about whether the INS count of the visas is accurate.
There are also indications that fraud is a serious problem in the program,
according to the subcommittee's chairman, Representative Lamar Smith, a
Texas Republican.


At the hearing, witnesses from the Immigration and Naturalization Service
and the State Department described a spot check of 3,247 H1-B petitions
issued by the consulate in Chennai, India.


"The results were staggering ­- 45 percent of the cases could not be
authenticated and 21 percent were identified as outright fraudulent," Smith
wrote to Doris Meissner, the INS Commissioner. "Chennai issued more than
15,000 H1-B visas in fiscal year 1998. A significant portion of those visas
may have been issued on the basis of fraudulent or unverifiable
documentation."


"Non-government witnesses who testified at the May hearing, including a
representative of large corporations that rely on the H1-B program to obtain
key personnel and two immigration attorneys, agreed that fraud is a serous
problem in the H1-B program," the letter said. "They expressed concern that
the large number of fraudulent petitions severely reduces the number of
visas available to legitimate employers."


Smith asked Meissner to take steps to crack down on fraud, but she has not
yet responded to the letter. An INS official said a response would be sent
within 60 days.


Allen Kay, a spokesman for Smith, said the congressmen will be looking
closely at all the bills when Congress returns in September. But he said
that Smith, like Winsky, would like to focus any new debate on longer-term
reforms of the system for permanent immigrants rather than temporary visa
programs.


The CAPITAL DISPATCH column is published weekly, on Tuesdays. Click here for
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Jeri Clausing at jeri@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.