GATES TO APPEAR AGAIN BEFORE CONGRESS ON EVE OF H-1B VISA RUSH
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
For second straight year, Microsoft exec will testify weeks
before application process begins
By Patrick Thibodeau
COMPUTERWORLD
March 3, 2008
March 3, 2008 (Computerworld) Next week, Microsoft Corp.
Chairman Bill Gates will testify before the House Committee
on Science and Technology at a hearing "on the future of
innovation and U.S. competitiveness," at which he likely
will renew his appeal for more foreign workers to be
allowed into the country.
The topic of the hearing is familiar ground for Gates on
Capitol Hill. But what makes his scheduled appearance on
March 12 potentially explosive is its timing, less than
three weeks before the start of the annual application rush
for H-1B visas.
April 1 is the first day that U.S. immigration authorities
will begin accepting H-1B applications for the federal
government's 2009 fiscal year, which begins in October.
Last year, the government stopped taking applications after
receiving about 150,000 in a single day -- far more than
enough to exhaust the annual cap of 65,000 regular visas
and 20,000 set aside for foreign nationals who have
advanced degrees from U.S. universities.
Last month, Gates called the H-1B program "a disaster," in
response to a question about immigration during a talk he
gave at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. "If I could
just change one law in the U.S., it would be this," Gates
said. An excerpt featuring that comment has been posted on
YouTube, and a video of the full speech can be viewed on
the university's Web site.
Gates testified last March before the Senate Committee on
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, warning that the
U.S. was risking its global leadership role because of
insufficient investments in research and education, as well
as the problems that companies face in hiring foreign
workers.
In his written testimony, Gates predicted -- accurately --
that for the first time in the history of the H-1B program,
the supply of visas would run out before students
graduating from college received their degrees. "This means
that U.S. employers will not be able to get H-1B visas for
an entire crop of U.S. graduates," he wrote. "We are
essentially asking top talent to leave the U.S."
It remains to be seen how well Gates' message on
immigration will play this year, amid slowing economic
growth and rising unemployment.
But Robert Hoffman, an Oracle Corp. executive who is co-
chairman of Compete America, a Washington-based group that
lobbies for immigration reform, said that the demand for H-
1B workers among U.S. companies continues unabated. "The
expectation is that you are going to see an even bigger
flood of applications than what we saw last year," he said.
Asked about the slowing economy, Hoffman said, "If you want
to talk about not helping the economy -- if there is a job
opening that is going unfilled in this economy and that we
are prepared to fill, we should fill it because that is a
person contributing to the economy."
The political pressure to raise the H-1B cap, or to shrink
it, also is ongoing, but people on both sides of the issue
are cautious about predicting that any legislation will
find its way out of Congress during an election year.
"I'm not at all convinced that we've won the battle for
this year," said Roy Beck, executive director of
NumbersUSA, an immigration advocacy group that opposes
efforts to increase the H-1B cap. But Beck added that he
thinks the Arlington, Va.-based group has helped to create
"enough counterweight" to challenge the cap-increase
proposals.
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