Senate to vote today on tech visa measure

Washington --- A Senate showdown is set for today on the long-sought bill by the technology industry to expand the number of visas for skilled foreign workers. With less than two weeks left before the Senate is scheduled to adjourn, the high-tech industry is pressing for passage of the bill, which would nearly double the number of H-1B visas for skilled foreigners, to 200,000 a year.

The industry says it is facing an extreme shortage of high-skilled workers, and the only way to fill a shortfall of up to 400,000 jobs in the short term is to look abroad.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) took two steps Friday to force a decision.

First he filled the "amendment tree" --- the list of H-1B amendments on which the Senate will vote --- with separate versions of the main bill.

That left no room for other immigration-related amendments backed by the White House and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Then Lott scheduled a cloture vote to cut off debate on the bill itself.

If the cloture vote fails to attract the needed 60 votes, Lott said, the visa bill would be dead for the year, and the Democrats would be to blame.

"This is critical to our nation," Lott said. "We need to get this done."

If cloture is approved, said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democrats would seek another way to get the immigration amendments passed.

"I think it is fair to say we will work with the White House to ensure that by the end of this session, there will be a provision that includes the Latino Fairness Act," he said. "Our first choice, of course, is H-1B, but if there are other options we'll look into those."

The Latino Fairness Act would offer permanent residence to political refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti --- a right already granted to people from Cuba and Nicaragua. Another amendment would grant amnesty for as many as 2 million undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States since 1986.

Supporters of these provisions see a double standard in offering visas to high-tech workers while the undocumented immigrants already in this country are fighting for residency.

"If we are going to do this for the high-tech workers, why don't we do this for the Hispanics?" Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), asked Friday.

Scott McNealy, chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems, wrote in USA Today last week that raising the cap on the number of skilled workers allowed into the United States is necessary to keep the economy on its high-tech roll.

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