H-1B SKIL bill pits IT workers against IT execs

The contentious SKIL bill — or Securing Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership Act of 2006 — is about to set off an old-fashioned donnybrook between immigration supporters and opponents before the lame-duck Congress fades into history.

At stake is the number of H-1B visas for specialty occupations, which include IT, issued for next year and many years after. SKIL would increase the annual cap on the visa for 2007 from 65,000 to 115,000, and by 20 percent above that annually if the quota for the previous year was reached.

Both Republican and Democratic members of Congress support the bill, which is perceived as a way to attract talent and keep the U.S. competitive with fast growing economies such as China and India, said Andrea Hoffman, vice president at tech-industry lobbying group TechNet.

Many IT workers, however, strongly disagree, questioning whether the U.S. is in fact facing a shortage of skilled IT workers and arguing that large corporations misuse the H-1B program to hire cheap labor from low-wage countries.

One of the few studies on this issue, “The Bottom of the Pay Scale: Wages for H-1B Computer Programmers — F.Y. 2004” was undertaken by a member of the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group opposed to increasing such visas. The study found that IT workers on H-1B visas were paid on average $13,000 less than Americans in the same occupation and state, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Lined up against IT workers and their organizations are CEOs of some of the largest IT companies in the world.

The H-1B issue and restrictions on immigrations by foreign technologists drew a thumbs-down from multiple industry executives at the TechNet Innovation Summit held Nov. 15 at Stanford University.

The United States has enjoyed an advantage, in that “smart” people from around the world want to come to this country, said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. “We’ve had the cream of the crop of people from other countries. That’s been a huge benefit to us,” he said. “We’re making that tougher with our immigration policies.”

“We have this crazy policy in the U.S. that smart people can’t come here. Only 65,000 per year can,” said Reed Hastings, founder, chairman, and CEO of NetFlix.

Still, even with solid support from both sides of the aisle, passage of the full SKIL bill is unlikely this year, given that major appropriations bills have yet to pass, TechNet’s Hoffman said.

“There’s the will to do it, but there are so many important issues in the broader immigration system,” Hoffman said.

TechNet is hoping to win a temporary lifting of annual H-1B caps that have already been reached — perhaps in an appropriations bill that is sure to pass. Broader consideration of the full SKIL Bill will almost certainly wait for 2007, when Democrats will control both the House and Senate, Hoffman said.