SIA, IEEE put aside differences to press Congress for H-1B visa reform

By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- Electronic News, 10/12/2007

Evidencing the importance with which the tech industry views the issue of immigration reform, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA (IEEE-USA) on Thursday sent a joint letter to Senate and House leaders to urge the passage of measures to make it easier for companies to hire and retain highly skilled immigrant workers.

The fact that the two organizations have joined together to lobby Congress in this way may come as a surprise to industry watchers: The SIA has firmly advocated an increase on the number of visas allotted, while the IEEE has said that an increase should not happen until there is better governmental monitoring of the current H-1B holders. In a joint statement made Thursday, the SIA and the IEEE admitted that they "often at odds on immigration issues, notably H-1B visas."

Apparently, the stalled status of the immigration topic in Congress has drawn the two groups to band together to push the debate forward. In June, the Senate ruled in a 50-45 vote to extend deliberations of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, rejecting a call to close debate and move toward a final vote on the legislation. Also in June, an identical bill similarly stalled in the House. If passed, the bills would raise the H-1B foreign skilled worker visa cap from 65,000 to 115,000, and raise the limit on employment-based visas from 140,000 to 290,000 per year.

Many tech companies have said that reform is sorely needed, as the current number of allotted visas is in increasingly high demand. In April, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally mandated cap of 65,000 for fiscal year 2008 just one day after starting the receipt of applications, marking the fifth year in a row that the cap has been reached before the start of the fiscal year. For fiscal 2007, the cap was reached in less than two months.

The SIA and the IEEE said that they put aside their differences because they agreed there is a need to "urge swift congressional action" in order to attract and retain foreign-born scientists and engineers. The groups said that new legislation would "enhance the global competitiveness of the U.S. high-tech sector."

"Both IEEE-USA and SIA see the retention of highly educated immigrants as part of a broader competitiveness and innovation initiative that includes a doubling of federal investment in research in the physical sciences, improvements in science, technology, engineering and math education at the K-12 and undergraduate levels, and enactment of a permanent and strengthened R&D tax credit," the letter, signed by SIA president George Scalise and IEEE-USA president John Meredith, reads in part.

Although it has been a controversial topic, an increase in H-1Bs would not be at all unprecedented: Congress raised the cap to 195,000 in 2000 to accommodate the U.S. technology boom. By the 2004 fiscal year, after the "bubble burst," the cap was back down to 65,000, and it has not been changed since.