Clinton's new visa proposal

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, MAY 12. The U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton, has asked Congress to increase the number of temporary visas for highly skilled workers to 200,000 for each of the next three years. This would mean an 80 per cent increase in the present levels of the H-1B visa category if law-makers go along with the plan. The White House has also proposed to raise fees that employers would have to pay under the visa programme so as to fund job training for American technology workers.

The administration is responding to pressures from the high technology industries like Microsoft and Intel which say that there is a severe shortage in the market for the skilled category and that the present number of visas are not adequate. ``The caps have already been hit and there is clearly a greater demand than there is availability'', argued Mr. Gene Sperling, the head of the President's National Economic Council in a message to Congress.

The current annual limit on the H-1B category has been fixed at 115,000 and the visas granted from India accounts for nearly 50 per cent of the total. Although there is bipartisan support to allow high technology industries to hire foreign workers, the increase in the H-1B visas has been resisted by the American labour unions who argue that locals lose out in the job market.

The Democrats and those law-makers on Capitol Hill who have a labour constituency, have successfully pressured the administration to cough up more money for job training for American technology workers. In fact, under the latest White House proposal, there is a four-fold raise in the fee that employers would have to pay for each hired worker - from the present $ 500 to $ 2000. Additionally, for employers who use the H-1B visas for more than 15 per cent of their workforce, the fee has been raised to $ 3000.

The Clinton administration has not merely confined itself to changes on the fees front for employers on the H-1B visas. Under the new proposals, there is also a plan that would boost to 50 per cent by fiscal 2003 that holders of the particular visa should have a Master's degree; and some 10,000 visas have been set apart for research institutions and universities.

Aside from the overall objections to the H-1B visa, increase from some law-makers, a troublesome part of the administration's proposal has to do with a package that also calls upon Congress to allow immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras to qualify for the same type of favourable consideration for residency as do immigrants from Cuba or Nicaragua, an idea that has been rejected by the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Henry Hyde.

The latest proposal from the White House on the H-1B visas comes at a time when there are at least two considerations on Capitol Hill, one of which is similar to what is now being proposed by the administration. But there is also a bill in the House of Representatives that has been introduced by the Republican from Texas, Mr. Lamar Smith, calling for suspending the caps on H-1B visas for three years but would include stipulations such as companies under the programme having to prove that they have increased their American work force and not having replaced local workers with ``lower paid'' foreigners.

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