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Legislators Voice Concerns About H-1B Visas


By Diane Rezendes Khirallah
InformationWeek
February 4, 2002 12:00 AM

When Congress voted a year and a half ago on a bill sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to increase the number of H-1B visa workers allowed into this country, the IT job market was very different than it is today. The dot-com boom was in full swing, and there seemed to be a severe shortage of technology talent. That helps explain why the Senate voted nearly unanimously--96 to 1--to approve the bill.

Some members of Congress, however, are still unhappy at how the bill was slipped through the House of Representatives late at night, with little debate. Reps. Eva Clayton, D-N.C., and Thomas Tancredo, R-Colo., are two who objected to the process. They say the bill was sent to the House late on the same day it passed the Senate and not all members of the House knew a vote was coming. As they recall, the proposed legislation was presented three hours after legislators were told they could go home for the day. It was passed by a voice vote.

At the time, Clayton circulated a letter asking for a presidential veto, without success. One of her main concerns was that the bill didn't contain provisions or money for retraining out-of-work Americans in rural areas such as the one she represents in the eastern part of North Carolina, just 40 miles outside the vaunted Research Triangle. "It's a depressed area," she says.

Tancredo, who chairs the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, opposed the bill then and has filed a new bill (HR 3222) to immediately roll back H-1B visas to 65,000, the pre-1998 level. In years when unemployment tops 6%, the number would be rolled back by another 10,000 for each quarter-point over the 6% figure. "Importing hundreds of thousands of foreign workers at a time of growing unemployment in America is obviously absurd," he says.

The bill has been referred to the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims. Tancredo is seeking co-sponsors and trying to get the legislation considered during this session of Congress.

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