Before reading this sob story about how Infogain is losing business because they can't find people without using H-1B visas, take a look at what they are paying their H-1B workers. Keep in mind that $58,000 the average salary for IT workers in the U.S. and that Cupertino and Seattle are areas where the local average salary is much higher than the national average.

Title                     Employer     Work Location    Number of Visas     Salary    Salary Interval    Work Dates

Software Engineer H-1B InfoGain Corporation Kansas City KS 20 45000 A 10/1/97 10/01/2000
Programmer/analyst H-1B InfoGain Corporation Salt Lake City UT 10 45000 A 11/1/97 10/31/2000
Programmer/analyst H-1B InfoGain Corporation Salt Lake City UT 10 45000 A 11/1/97 10/31/2000
Systems Analyst PERM InfoGain Corporation Cupertino CA 1 4000 M 8/14/96 N/A
Software Engineer PERM InfoGain Corporation Cupertino CA 1 4800 M 9/10/96 N/A
Programmer Analyst PERM InfoGain Corporation Cupertino CA 1 4343.73 M 10/15/96 N/A
Software Engineer PERM InfoGain Corporation Cupertino CA 1 4583 M 10/22/96 N/A
MARKETING ENGINEER H-1B INFOGAIN CORPORATION CUPERTINO CA 5 45000 A 12/1/96 12/01/1999
FIELD APPLICATION ENGINEE H-1B INFOGAIN CORPORATION CUPERTINO CA 3 40200 A 6/16/97 06/16/2000
SOFTWARE ENGINEER H-1B INFOGAIN CORPORATION CUPERTINO CA 125 48000 A 11/1/97 11/01/2000
PROGRAMMER/ANALYST H-1B INFOGAIN CORPORATION SEATTLE WA 30 37000 A 3/6/98 03/01/2001
SALES/MARKETING ENGINEER H-1B INFOGAIN CORPORATION CUPERTINO CA 10 41000 A 5/1/98 05/01/2001
SOFTWARE ENGINEER H-1B INFOGAIN CORPORATION CUPERTINO CA 125 48000 A 9/10/98 09/10/2001
Programmer H-1B InfoGain Corporation Seattle WA 10 45000 A 11/1/97 11/01/2000
Programmer H-1B InfoGain Corporation Seattle WA 10 45000 A 11/1/97 11/01/2000
Programmer/Analyst H-1B InfoGain Corporation Seattle WA 30 37000 A 3/12/98 03/01/2001
Programmer/Analyst H-1B InfoGain Corporation Seattle WA 30 37000 A 3/12/98 03/01/2001
Software Engineer PERM InfoGain Corporation Cupertino CA 1 65000 A 2/2/99 N/A




http://www.sjmercury.com/business/top/034087.htm


San Jose Mercury News


Posted at 8:25 p.m. PDT Tuesday, July 25, 2000

Tech-visa boost mired in politics

BY JIM PUZZANGHERA
AND K. OANH HA
MERCURY NEWS

WASHINGTON -- Legislation to increase the number of visas available
for skilled foreign workers, once on a fast track to approval under
strong pressure from the high-tech industry, now will not get through
Congress until at least September because it has become deeply
entangled in election-year politics.

Thrown into the chaos of the final days of a legislative session in
the weeks before a tight presidential election, the legislation to
boost the number of so-called H-1B visas is in danger of being delayed
until next year. But key congressional backers and high-tech officials
remain confident that Congress and the White House will find a way to
deliver on one of Silicon Valley's top legislative priorities this
year.

``We're absolutely confident the votes are there'' to pass an
increase, said William Archey, president of the American Electronics
Association. ``We're getting caught in election-year stuff.''

Silicon Valley executives have argued they need more foreign workers
to fill vacancies in the booming high-tech industry. This year's
allotment of 115,000 H-1B visas was reached in March, six months
before the end of the fiscal year. Proposals in the House of
Representatives and Senate would nearly double that allotment to about
200,000 a year over the next three years.

But House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, on Tuesday confirmed
what many in Silicon Valley had feared recently -- the House
legislation will not be voted on before Congress breaks for its summer
recess at the end of the week.

The Senate is still trying to bring its legislation up for a vote this
week. But the failure of the House to act before its members leave
town for the political conventions means the legislation will have to
be approved in the most hectic and unpredictable time of the year in
Washington -- fall of an election year.

As Congress rushes to pass a budget and finish its work so members can
go home to campaign for re-election in October, it's often hard to
pass controversial legislation. And Silicon Valley executives have
warned that should Congress fail to increase the number of H-1B visas,
many projects will have to be delayed or scrapped because of a lack of
manpower.

The delay is limiting the growth of some companies, said Kapil Nanda,
chief executive of Infogain Corp., a Los Gatos consulting firm. Nanda
estimates that his company, which accepts projects on contract from
local companies, has lost between $3 million and $5 million this year
in projects that would have been worked on by H-1B staff. This year
Infogain has hired more than 100 engineers on H-1B visas, and an
additional 50 are in the pipeline because Infogain can't get the
special visas.

Nanda fears the delay might cost the company talented workers.

``Not getting those visas has definitely hindered our growth,'' said
Nanda. ``The uncertainty makes it difficult to recruit people and give
them a kind of time frame of when we can hire them. By the time we get
to them they may have moved on. These are people with lots of
options.''

With the backlog of people waiting for visas, Nanda said the company
probably won't be able to bring in visa workers until the winter.

``We're talking about years of backlog,'' said Tracy Koon, Intel
Corp.'s director of corporate affairs. ``It's like that scene in
Indiana Jones running with the big rock behind him. The backlog has
gotten bigger and bigger more difficult to deal with.''

The H-1B legislation needs to surmount more than just the hectic final
days of a legislative session. The issue has become enmeshed in the
battle for control of the House of Representatives and the fight for
Latino votes in the November elections.

In addition, the industry was hoping early passage of the bill would
help alleviate one of the problems with the visa program. For the past
few years, the visa allotment has been reached early in the fiscal
year, causing applications to stockpile awaiting the new allotment
when the next fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

Backers of the H-1B visa increase this year planned to try to add
thousands more visas into the current fiscal year to erase that
backlog. But with final approval not even possible before September at
the earliest, its unlikely the law could be enacted before the 2000
fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

Things seemed to be moving along smoothly this spring, with key
committees in the House and Senate approving visa increases. But the
main factor in the process grinding to a halt was a White House
proposal on May 11 that injected two immigration issues important to
Latinos into the legislation.

One proposal would extend a current immigration amnesty provision for
Nicaraguans and Cubans to others from Latin America. The second, known
as late amnesty, would allow illegal immigrants who entered the United
States before 1986 to apply to become U.S. citizens. A similar amnesty
was passed in the 1980s.

Republicans charged that Democrats wanted to tack on unrelated items
to the H-1B bill just to force the GOP to turn them down and look bad
in the eyes of Latinos. Democrats, led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San
Jose, a chief sponsor of one of the visa increase bills, said the
Latino issues are immigration related and should be considered with
the H-1B bill.

``This is a big deal issue,'' she said. ``Maybe the Republicans didn't
know that, but it is a huge issue in the Latino community all over
America. I didn't make that happen.''

Still, Lofgren and five other House Democrats said in a letter to Rep.
David Dreier, R-Covina, a key sponsor of one of the visa bills, that
Republicans drop the Latino issues in order to get a vote on the H-1B
increase. But Republicans criticized the tone of the letter as highly
partisan and said they are seeking a bipartisan spirit before moving
forward.