Tech execs lobby Senate on H-1B visas

The Si Valley newspaper reports:

WASHINGTON - Silicon Valley executives, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi lobbied Congress on immigration Wednesday as the tech sector made some headway in getting employer-friendly provisions in a massive Senate bill. ...

"We're caught in a vise on immigration, and we're worried that this point system will mean a lot of job needs go unmet," said Bill Coleman, CEO of San Jose-based Cassatt. He noted that 53 percent of Silicon Valley engineers are foreign-born. ...

The Senate bill raises the cap on H-1B visas for skilled workers from 65,000 to 115,000, but does not exempt holders of advanced degrees, as last year's Senate bill did. The Cantwell-Cornyn amendment includes that exemption - which executives said was crucial in filling specific jobs quickly - and raises the cap to 140,000.

Many visa-holders wait years for a green card, and that backlog "is causing a massive recruiting and retention crisis for employers," the TechNet executives said in a letter to senators. ...

Some critics of the visa program say employers have abused it to hire foreign workers at lower wages. Tech representatives say such abuses are few ...

So it is a crisis that only 53% of our engineers are foreign-born? How many do they want? 80%? 90%?

All H1-B visas are for the benefit of employers hiring foreign workers at lower wages. There are always American workers available for the same jobs. Aliens of extraordinary abilities get EB-1 visas.