< back
SEVERAL LEADING HIGH-TECH ENTREPRENEURS WRITE OPEN LETTER TO INS REGARDING VISAS FOR TECH WORKERS
Several leaders of high-tech firms have written an open letter to Congress urging a reform of the current employment based immigration system.  The Immigration Reform Coalition is led by many US employers, industry group leaders, and an immigrant, Linus Torvals, who has been waiting several years for a green card. Torvals is the creator of Linux, the revolutionary operating system. 
The group is closely tied to IEEE-USA which has been a vocal opponent of increasing the H-1B cap. Not surprising, the group is calling for a cutback in the number of H-1B temporary visas that are issued annually. What is surprising, however, is the support the group is giving for making it much easier and faster to get a permanent visas.  According to the letter, “Immigration status-legal permanent residency, the path to citizenship-is what the overwhelming majority of H1-B visa holders want.  It is what employers, too, say that they want. Major employers like Hewlett- Packard and Cisco insist that they only use H1-B visas for new hires because it takes so long to get green cards, and point out that if green cards were provided as quickly, demand for the H1-B would drop. Yet the more H1-B visas are issued, the more backlogged the Department of Labor and INS gets.” 
Because of processing issues, many employment based immigrant visas go unused each year - almost 80,000 in 1999 alone.  However, for two countries, India and China, employment-based immigrant visa numbers are backlogged, meaning they wait years to even become eligible to apply to file for permanent residency, a process which itself currently takes about two years.  
The crux of the proposals laid forth in the letter is that intending immigrants who have a job offer be allowed to come to the US and work, during which time the paperwork would be processed.  The letter also advocates that this time spent in the US be counted toward the five years of permanent residency necessary to apply for citizenship. 
The position taken in the letter, shared by both immigrants and high-tech employers, contradicts the claims of many H1-B opponents.  Opponents of the program claim that employers only want H-1B visas because they can pay workers a lower wage without having to commit to the green card process. 
Despite industry support, it is not likely that such legislation will be introduced in Congress. 
The letter to Congress is available online at http://www.immigrationreform.com