High tech workers become pawns in American political battles

The White House and lawmakers of both Republican and Democratic persuasion are all agreed that the United States desperately needs to open its doors to foreign high-tech workers — India being the biggest exporter — to ward off a shortage crisis that could stymie the economic boom. They even agree on a legislative instrument — a new bill that will increase the number of H1-B visas from 115,000 per year to 200,000.

But each side seems bent on milking the bill for its own agenda. The result: A war, and a deadlock.

A Republican-sponsored bill to raise the H1-B cap was stalled in Congress earlier this week by Democrats who want to use the legislation to allow half a million illegal Latino and Carribbean immigrants become US citizens. This is not acceptable to Republicans since most such immigrants tend to be Democratic voters.

The Democrats in turn are accusing Republicans of using the H1-B bill to squeeze lobbyists into channelling greater political contributions from high-tech firms. In one particularly waspy exchange last week, influential senate aides fired sulphurous e-mails accusing one another of being the roadblock to H-1B visa.

The battle became public when a top aide to Senator Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, sent around an e-mail suggesting that an aide to Senator Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) might have used the visa controversy to pressure lobbyists into contributing more money to help in his re-election. The charge was flatly denied by aides to Abraham and Senate leader Trent Lott, who both have been accused of strong-arming tech industry lobbyists.

"It is disturbing that some might be more interested in using this issue as a means of garnering financial support for beleaguered campaigns. Any efforts to tie political contributions to the consideration of the H-1B legislation are simply unconscionable," Reid’s aide wrote in an e-mail that was reported in Roll Call, a bi-weekly Congressional chronicle.

The charge sparked outrage among Republicans and they have now responded by simply stalling the Bill, much to the dismay of hi-tech corporations that have lobbied long and hard for the legislative change.

Thousands of jobs are lying unfilled in the US high-tech sector this year because the 115,000 H1-B visa quota for this year was used up within weeks after it had opened. Workers in countries like India who have already been hired directly or through bodyshoppers are waiting for next year’s quota — expanded or otherwise — to open.

Meanwhile, the pressure is increasing on US high tech industry with reports that Germany, Britain, France, and even Japan and Korea want skilled Indians to meet their shortage. Germany this week opened up 20,000 slots for high-tech workers following a bitter domestic wrangle that was dubbed the "War of the Gasterbeiters (Guest Workers)."

Industry leaders and analysts in United States agree that that battle for "knowledge workers" will become acute as the world proceeds apace with the digital revolution.

"Just like oil was the coveted asset of the 20th century, knowledge workers will be the most prized asset of the 21st century," Sycamore Networks’ Dr Desh Deshpande told this correspondent in an interview last week.

Meanwhile, high-tech workers who are already here are fulminating about the Congress not doing anything to address the issue of Green Cards. According to immigration lawyers, H1-B workers can stay in the US for only six years and will then have to return if they have not converted the H1-B into Green Cards.

But this process is becoming increasingly difficult because while H1-B has not country-wise allocations (Indians get a majority of H1-Bs), the Green Card is allocated country-wise. "Indians’ quota for green cards get filled up fast. Other countries don’t need so many green cards and there is often a lot of wastage," one software consultant fumed on an Internet forum.

Lobbying groups have now sprung up to press for more green cards. "We’re not against increasing the H-1B cap but at the same time there should be an assurance that green cards will also be given just as promptly," Shailesh Gala, president of the Immigrants Support Network, a lobby organization for immigrant workers, was quoted recently as saying.