Microsoft employees stuck on border
By David Broder | Comments(1)
As the Senate comes back to work this week, it is scheduled to take up the issue of immigration. And that is what brought Bill Gates to Washington for a rare visit.
The Microsoft billionaire does not love this capital, but he decided to add his personal voice to his Washington office’s lobbying effort to expand the number of foreign-born computer scientists allowed to work in this country under a special program known as H1B visas.
In an interview sandwiched between his meetings on Capitol Hill, Gates told me that the “high-skills immigration issue is by far the No. 1 thing” on the Washington agenda for Microsoft and for the electronics industry generally. “This is gigantic for us.”
Since autumn 2003,
Congress has limited the number of people admitted annually on H1B visas to 65,000. To qualify for such a visa, a person must have at least a bachelor’s degree and specialized knowledge and a job offer from an American employer. The visa is generally good for six years, with the possibility of applying for extensions.
So great is the demand for such skills in the burgeoning high-tech world that in August 2005, the last of the visas available for fiscal 2006 were issued. That means a 14-month shutdown of the program, until October of this year.
“It’s kind of ironic,” Gates told me, “to have somebody graduate from Stanford Computer Science Department and there’s not enough H1B visas, so they have to go back to India. ... And I have people who have been hired, who are just sitting on the border waiting.”
The draft bill that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter has been trying to prepare for floor consideration would expand the annual H1B limit from 65,000 to 115,000. By excluding dependents (who now are counted against the cap) from the total, it might mean the entry of as many as 300,000 people a year —one-tenth of 1 percent of the U.S. population.
President Bush and his administration support the expansion of H1B visas. And Gates, in turn, is enthusiastic about the White House and bipartisan congressional efforts to boost the teaching of math and
science in American high schools with the long-term goal of expanding the supply of qualified Americans for these jobs.
He is backing that effort both with gifts of technology from the company and grants of $300 million a year from his foundation for innovation in high schools.
Opposition to the H1B
program grew during the dot-com bust, when groups representing domestic
electrical engineers and computer technicians argued that foreigners were taking away their jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports unemployment among computer and mathematical operators is less than three percent.
Still, there is reluctance — especially in the House of Representatives — to lift the ceiling on H1B visas in an election year.
The House has responded to public pressure to close the borders to illegal immigration and seems incapable of distinguishing that
problem from the value of encouraging high-skill workers to bring their talents to the United States.
That’s why Bill Gates comes to Washington.
Contact David Broder at
By David Broder | Comments(1)
As the Senate comes back to work this week, it is scheduled to take up the issue of immigration. And that is what brought Bill Gates to Washington for a rare visit.
The Microsoft billionaire does not love this capital, but he decided to add his personal voice to his Washington office’s lobbying effort to expand the number of foreign-born computer scientists allowed to work in this country under a special program known as H1B visas.
In an interview sandwiched between his meetings on Capitol Hill, Gates told me that the “high-skills immigration issue is by far the No. 1 thing” on the Washington agenda for Microsoft and for the electronics industry generally. “This is gigantic for us.”
Since autumn 2003,
Congress has limited the number of people admitted annually on H1B visas to 65,000. To qualify for such a visa, a person must have at least a bachelor’s degree and specialized knowledge and a job offer from an American employer. The visa is generally good for six years, with the possibility of applying for extensions.
So great is the demand for such skills in the burgeoning high-tech world that in August 2005, the last of the visas available for fiscal 2006 were issued. That means a 14-month shutdown of the program, until October of this year.
“It’s kind of ironic,” Gates told me, “to have somebody graduate from Stanford Computer Science Department and there’s not enough H1B visas, so they have to go back to India. ... And I have people who have been hired, who are just sitting on the border waiting.”
The draft bill that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter has been trying to prepare for floor consideration would expand the annual H1B limit from 65,000 to 115,000. By excluding dependents (who now are counted against the cap) from the total, it might mean the entry of as many as 300,000 people a year —one-tenth of 1 percent of the U.S. population.
President Bush and his administration support the expansion of H1B visas. And Gates, in turn, is enthusiastic about the White House and bipartisan congressional efforts to boost the teaching of math and
science in American high schools with the long-term goal of expanding the supply of qualified Americans for these jobs.
He is backing that effort both with gifts of technology from the company and grants of $300 million a year from his foundation for innovation in high schools.
Opposition to the H1B
program grew during the dot-com bust, when groups representing domestic
electrical engineers and computer technicians argued that foreigners were taking away their jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports unemployment among computer and mathematical operators is less than three percent.
Still, there is reluctance — especially in the House of Representatives — to lift the ceiling on H1B visas in an election year.
The House has responded to public pressure to close the borders to illegal immigration and seems incapable of distinguishing that
problem from the value of encouraging high-skill workers to bring their talents to the United States.
That’s why Bill Gates comes to Washington.
Contact David Broder at