Testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration
Presented by Susan Williams DeFife, CEO, womenCONNECT.com
October 21, 1999

Thank you Senator Abraham for inviting me here today and
for your leadership on the H1-B visa issue. It is an issue that is becoming
critical to the future growth of the technology industry.

To give you a little background on my company,
womenCONNECT.com is the leading Internet site for women in business -
providing original daily content, interactive tools, online discussion
groups and ecommerce. When I started the company in 1994, the Internet was
not yet a part of most people's lives, the InfoComm industry in Northern
Virginia was in its infancy, and skilled technical workers or those who had
the knowledge base to learn new technologies were fairly easy to come by.

In the past five years, the growth in the industry has
exceeded even our own aggressive predictions. The Internet has become an
integral part of people's everyday lives changing how we communicate, how we
gather information, how we shop, and how we do business. In Northern
Virginia you only have to drive from Tysons to Dulles to see the impact of
the industry on the economy. You can see the size, the strength, and the
wealth of the new technology companies in the many buildings cropping up.
Those new buildings also represent an extraordinary increase in new jobs and
the demand for more and more skilled workers to fill those positions.

From industry giants like AOL to the emerging growth
companies like womenCONNECT.com, the shortage of skilled workers has become
one of the highest priority issues facing us. For emerging companies like
mine with a smaller employee base - we have 25 employees - one unfilled tech
position can severely impact our ability to grow.

These emerging companies are fueling the technology
revolution and making significant contributions to the strong economy we now
enjoy. Among them will be the next AOL or Amazon.com. We are the companies
that are innovating and growing fast. At womenCONNECT.com we've doubled in
size in each of the past two years and we expect to double again within the
next six months. There are many stories like ours. As investment capital
flows into start-ups and puts them on a fast growth track, the demand for
workers will continue to far exceed the supply. And the workforce shortage
isn't limited to our region. Similar concerns are expressed across the
country.

What happens when companies like mine can't hire the
workers we need? We have to delay projects and in the Internet industry
where change occurs daily and competitors are springing up all around you,
waiting to execute on a project can be lethal. Last year, we spent months
recruiting for a systems administrator who has the critical role of ensuring
our content is presented correctly and on time to our audience. We were
fortunate to eventually find Noemi Nieto-Mendieta, a young woman from Mexico
who was finishing coursework at a local university. (Noemi is with me
today.) In order to hire her we went through the H1-B application process
and then, instead of filling that months old vacancy, we waited again, for
four more months until the next fiscal year began and additional H1-Bs
became available. Today, I have another tech position that has gone unfilled
for 7 months - not because of lack of interest in the company. We are one of
the companies that people want to work for. We have a great reputation, are
viewed as a company with huge potential, and we offer stock options as
incentives. What I can't find are people with the specific skills or the
ability to obtain those skills as quickly as I need them. As we've entered
into new partnerships with industry heavyweights such as Lycos, CNN,
CompuServe, and USA Today we have had to carefully space those projects to
ensure we can meet scheduled delivery dates and hold off on new projects
until the appropriate staff people can come on board.

In order to fill these positions, the options for tech
companies are not particularly attractive: we can limit our growth, but then
we lose the ability to compete; we can "steal" employees from other
companies, which makes none of us stronger and forces us to constantly look
over our shoulders; or, in the case of larger companies I know, move
operations off-shore.

I understand the desire to provide jobs to American
citizens, but in an economy where unemployment is at record lows, it is
unrealistic to believe we can fill all of the new jobs being created within
the technology industry with the workers we have. I agree with those who
call for increased educational programs. We should be developing new workers
who can fully participate in the new economy and maintain our
competitiveness. Many business leaders like me are willing to step up to
fully participate and support those programs. But they are long-term
solutions. In the short term, limiting our ability to recruit skilled
workers from a larger labor pool around the world only limits the growth of
emerging companies and ultimately slows the economy. I hope Congress will
give strong consideration to the importance of the H1-B program and support
an increase in the annual cap on these visas.

Thank you.