Tight US immigration forces outsourcing: Bill Gates

[cato2]

Tight US immigration forces outsourcing: Bill Gates

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US high-tech companies are being forced to outsource more jobs overseas because of outdated restrictions on immigration, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told Congress Wednesday.

Gates, echoing a longstanding complaint from the technology sector, told a congressional panel that the US immigration system "makes attracting and retaining high-skilled immigrants exceptionally challenging for US firms."

"Congress's failure to pass high-skilled immigration reform has exacerbated an already grave situation," Gates said in remarks prepared for delivery to a hearing of the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee.

"As a result, many US firms, including Microsoft, have been forced to locate staff in countries that welcome skilled foreign workers to do work that could otherwise have been done in the United States, if it were not for our counterproductive immigration policies."

Gates said the limits on so-called H-1B visas aimed at highly skilled professionals are far too low for the rapidly growing tech sector.
He said the current cap of 65,000 H-1B visas "is arbitrarily set and bears no relation to the US economy's demand for skilled professionals."

The Microsoft founder noted that all the 65,000 visas for the current fiscal year were snapped up in one day last April and that employers are now waiting to apply for visas for fiscal 2009, starting in October.

"Last year, for example, Microsoft was unable to obtain H-1B visas for one-third of the highly qualified foreign-born job candidates that we wanted to hire," Gates said.

"If we increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to US companies, employment of US nationals would likely grow as well. For instance, Microsoft has found that for every H-1B hire we make, we add on average four additional employees to support them in various capacities."

Gates also said the United States needs to improve science and math education to train a new generation of tech leaders, reversing a move away from these fields.

"If we don't reverse these trends, our competitive advantage will continue to erode. Our ability to create new high-paying jobs will suffer," Gates said.


Tight US immigration forces outsourcing: Bill Gates - Yahoo! News



Video of hearing testimony:

LiveLeak.com - Bill Gates: US Immigration Policy Forces Outsourcing

[Woodmonkey]

They won't listen. They seem ok with the poorly educated, low skilled illegals flooding over our borders, but not with allowing enough highly educated, highly skilled legal ones in.

[leobold1]

"If we increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to US companies, employment of US nationals would likely grow as well. For instance, Microsoft has found that for every H-1B hire we make, we add on average four additional employees to support them in various capacities."

Problem is, of those 4 additional employees, 2 are janitorial/service, 1 is security (of some sort), and the last one varies between supervisors and co-workers.

I do agree that we need more LEGAL immigration, but the Congress and business won't go for too much, because that'll take away their money.

[BrianK]

Back before we became PC illegal immigration was handled differantly. This isn't brought up probably because it would offend the sensitivities of the PC indoctrinated crowd of today.

Operation Wetback - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Legal immigration works.