H1-B Visa, China Trade Bills Stumble

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As Congress prepares for its summer recess, key legislative efforts backed by the business community are in jeopardy due to political stumbling blocks, says Representative Cal Dooley (D-California).

During a meeting hosted by the National Association of Manufacturers, Dooley fielded questions from businesses such as IBM and Eastman Kodak regarding the status of the China trade bill and expansion of temporary visas for skilled workers. Both issues lack congressional approval.

Dooley is a cofounder of the New Democrat Network, a group of more than 70 moderate House Democrats with a policy agenda focused on trade, high technology, and other economic issues.

Visas Threatened

The visa issue has been of great interest to high-tech companies who have claimed for several years that the booming economy has shrunk the pool of qualified U.S. workers. California technology companies have recently contended that they reached limits on temporary visas in March and are concerned that a worker shortage will slow business growth.

A bill sponsored by representatives David Dreier (R-California) and Zoe Lofgren (D-California) gained broad bipartisan support and seemed headed for prompt passage until it became the center of debate over immigration.

The proposed legislation would expand the number of skilled foreign workers from 115,000 to 200,000 that U.S. companies can hire after they are unable to find sufficiently qualified workers from the U.S. labor market. It would also double the cost of the work visa to $1,000, with the additional money earmarked for U.S. science scholarships and worker training programs. Dooley calls this program "capacity-building"--an effort to educate and train the U.S. work force to mitigate the future need for the visas, designated "H1-B."

But controversy engulfed the bill when the Hispanic Caucus proposed amending it to include legalization of immigrants who fled El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras in the 1980s but were not covered under a 1997 amnesty for Nicaraguan and Cuban refugees. The blending of two distinctly different immigration issues has slowed the progress of the bill, Dooley says.