Congress faces pressure to raise the number of visas for temporary employees.By Eilene Zimmerman, FSB contributor
September 26 2007: 1:30 PM EDT
FSB -- When Elizabeth Charnock couldn't find the talent she needed to keep her small Silicon Valley software company Cataphora (cataphora.com) growing, she looked for workers overseas. Finding the skilled employees she sought, the CEO applied for eight H1B visas for fiscal 2008. The documents enable foreigners with technical skills to work temporarily in the U.S.
"We did everything you're supposed to do," says Charnock. "We hired an immigration lawyer, we filed the first day. It went into a lottery. Five of our eight hires got visas." Two of the three that didn't had already sold their homes to move to California from Europe. "Their lives were turned upside down. They are stuck," adds Charnock, "and so are we. The competition for these people here is insane."
Being able to get H-1B visas for needed workers is essential for small companies, she says. "It levels the playing field," she says.
Charnock is one of a groundswell of entrepreneurs and advocates for immigrants who say Congress needs to raise the cap on H-1B visas to help the economy. Last week 1,000 protestors-mostly legal immigrants-drew attention to the situation of highly skilled foreigners who want to work for companies in the U.S. by marching on Capitol Hill.
The demonstrators were protesting long delays in securing green cards for highly-skilled workers already in the U.S. The lags make it difficult for businesses in fields such as engineering and software development to secure and keep foreign skilled labor in the country, they say. According to immigration and workforce experts, if the nation does not accept more foreign workers with skills in math, engineering and computer science, we risk losing ground in the global economy, because the computer scientists who can't find work in the U.S. will go to work for economic rivals.
Governors from 13 states are now weighing in on the issue. California's Arnold Schwarzenegger, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, and New York's Eliot Spitzer, were among those who signed a Sept. 11 letter (
http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/press-release/7381/) to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner urging them to raise the cap on the number of H1-B visas, which the governors say was set "arbitrarily" and today "bears no relation to our economy."
The H-1B program has its critics, including U.S.-born programmers, who say the visas serve mainly to drive down salaries of American tech workers. Some employers also question the value of the H-1B program. Miles Thomason, CEO of Levia Softwar (leviasoftware.com), a four-person company in Atlanta, says that when other companies hire H1-B workers and pay them a lower wages than Thomason pays his American workers, he loses competitiveness. He has tried to hire foreign-born programmers, but has not had positive experiences: "On paper they look good but the interviews don't go well," he says. "Communication issues alone are problematic for us."
Should the U.S. raise the cap on H-1B visas? Comment here.
http://fsbfeatures.blogs.fsb.com/2007/09/25/should-the-us-grant-more-h-1b-visas/#commentshttp://money.cnn.com/2007/09/25/smbusiness/h1b_cap.fsb/?postversion=2007092612I wonder what Elizabeth Charnock was willing to pay.....?
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