Facing another squeeze on a visa program for skilled workers, US business leaders are stepping up efforts to raise the limits, arguing that the nation is running short of the talent it needs to remain competitive. A broad coalition of businesses, especially in the tech sector, are warning that the quota of 65,000 for the so-called H-1B visa program on April 1, is likely to be filled the first day submissions are accepted for the fiscal year starting October 1. If that occurs, employers seeking to hire skilled foreigners will have to wait for next year's application to hire people in October 2009. It would be the second year in a row that the limit will have been reached on the first day, and will prompt the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency to resort again to a “lottery” to award these visas. Robert Hoffman, vice president at software giant Oracle and head of the Compete America coalition, said the squeeze on these visas is hurting the ability of American companies to compete in the global marketplace. “This is an arbitrary and outdated cap set in 1990,” Hoffman told a gathering of business leaders and journalists in Washington this past week. “For the second consecutive year, US companies and research institutions will be forced to put plans on hold as they wait for a random lottery to determine who gets to hire the scientists and engineers they need. It's no way to run a business, or a visa program.” Hoffman said a recent survey showed some 140,000 job openings for skilled positions among the Standard & Poor's 500 companies, the largest firms in the United States. “It's not just a tech problem or an aerospace problem, it's a national problem,” he said. Other business leaders have blamed the cap and a backlog in other programs for permanent US residency for a shortage of computer scientists, engineers and other professionals, and argue that the inability to fill the jobs forces companies to outsource work overseas. __
