On March 12 Bill Gates was in Washington to participate in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the United States House Committee on Science and Technology.
Although the committee has no jurisdiction over immigration, Gates could not but discuss immigration and the H-1B visa situation since he believes in the link between American technology competitiveness and American policy on foreign workers.
Pointing out that Microsoft had been unable to hire one-third of the candidates it wished to hire from overseas because of too few H1B visas, he suggested that ‘counterproductive’ US immigration policies should be overhauled so that more people (highly-skilled professionals) could enter the country on these visas.
In response to Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher’s remark about the student from India replacing the job of the American B and C student, Gates argued that it would on the contrary create jobs around the world class engineers and thus create employment for ‘B’ and ‘C’ American students.
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Now that we are aware that Indian offshore outsourcing companies have been the recipients of about 80% of the H-1B visas for the program’s top 10 participants in 2007, let’s take a closer look at how they were allocated.

The lion’s share, amounting to 4,559, went to Bangalore’s Infosys Technologies (INFY). That was followed by Wipro, also Bangalore based, with 2,567 visa petitions approved. (Of its 9,000 employees in the United States, Infosys has 7,500 employees on H-1B visas, while Wipro has 4,000 employees in the U.S of which 2,500 are on H-1B visas).

The other 2007 visa recipients included UST Global and Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH) both of which are based in the U.S. but operate from India.
Only two American companies, Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) figured in the to p 10. Whereas Microsoft obtained 959 visa petition approvals, Intel had to be satisfied with 369.
In spite of this American tech businesses are asking Congress to increase the number of visas from 65,000 a year to a minimum of 115,000.
This is sure to cause much heartburn with critics already accusing the outsourcers of abusing the American program. While the visas are expected to help boost the U.S. economy they feel they are doing the opposite by eliminating jobs and thus chipping away at the American economy. They feel the program’s standards can be tightened were the companies first be obliged to attempt employing Americans and also be obligated to guarantee that American personnel will not be supplanted by these visa employees.
Two senior legislators, Senators Grassley and Durbin have already initiated legislation for overhauling the H-1B and L-1 visa programs with the aim of giving American workers priority and of cracking down on unprincipled companies that dispossess eligible Americans of high-skill jobs.
Companies are now being asked to reveal details of the number of visas they hold, the wages paid, what efforts have been made to recruit eligible American workers, and whether any American workers have experienced the outsourcing of their responsibilities.
In their defense these two leading companies, Infosys and Wipro have declared earlier on that they are not misusing the program. In the past, they’ve said the jobs they fill in the U.S. are higher skilled than those in India, and involve custom software development and sales.

In its latest issue, BusinessWeek has reported that most of the offshore outsourcing companies granted H-1B visas last year were Indian ones, accounting for about 80% of the visa petitions that were approved for the program’s top 10 participants.
This follows requests to Congress by technologically advanced companies to augment the yearly allotment of H-1B visas, whereby highly educated foreigners can temporarily work in the United States.
But this is not likely to go down well with certain critics, however, who believe that this is helping to wipe out jobs for Americans. They claim that these companies low-cost workers are brought to the United. States, trained, and then returned home a year or two later from where they provide tech support and other services from abroad.
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The National Science Board (NSB), has released its report, “Science and Engineering Indicators 2008″ on Tuesday. In it, the board, which manages the National Science Foundation, reveals that of all the temporary visas permitted in 2006, 54% of them went to Indians. Now over 50% of the H-1B visas have been issued to them.
They are followed by the Chinese with 9%, the Canadians, the South Koreans and the Philippines with 3% each. Examining the status of engineering and science training along with the capability of the United States in competing globally, the report also takes into account and analyses H-1B visa trends.
Under the H-1B program, according to the study 51% of the estimated 110,000 H-1B visas were issued in 2006 and 51% of the visa holders were employed in computer-related professions. Compare this to 2002 when about 25% were employed in computer-related careers. This move could most probably be due to the increase of offshore outsourcing in the U.S.
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