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Led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who wanted an increase of 60,000 extra visas, the 18-member committee settled on an amendment from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would allow 30,000 more H-1B visas and increase employer-paid fees by $500 for each six-year visa. The proposal also would raise the fees for L-1 visas by $750.

The proposal now goes to the House Judiciary Committee, which has proposed raising the L-1 fee to $1,500 but not adding any extra visas, for negotiations.

Proponents of additional visas say fees will help pay for a bloated
federal budget that has faced huge expenditures for hurricanes and the ongoing war in Iraq. Under the Senate proposal, the extra H-1b visa revenue would annually add $30 million to the budget.

Worker advocates see the move as yet another industry sales pitch for cheap labor. Adding visas to the budget bill was a "dark of the night" ploy by industry lobbyists, said Ron Hira, an Assistant Professor of Public at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

"The bill was on a legislative vehicle, and the legislative vehicle was the budget bill, which has to be passed. This has been done in the past where visa raises occurred in the dark of the night," said Hira, who also heads the Career & Workforce Policy Committee for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

"This is a situation where the budget deficit is so large, and with the budget pressures this is a way for the legislature to raise money for pet projects at the expense of American workers. And you can see that the industry lobbyists were willing to go along with slight increase of fees for the visas."

The AFL-CIO's Mike Gildea said labor was in a tough position after three Senators who usually back workers voted for the extra H-1b visas. He said the best chance to defeat the proposal will come in the House, where leader House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-WI) has suggested he will limit any changes to the guest worker visa program to fee raises.

"We could end up with the position that the number of H-1bs could be scaled back again, and the visa fee bumped in conference, but the preferred outcome is to get just the L-1 fee increase, and no increase
in H-1b numbers," said Gildea, Executive Director for the AFL-CIO's Department of Professional Employees. "At least we removed the worst part in the judiciary committee's proposal by knocking it back from 60,000 to the 30,000, and getting the increase in fees on L-1s."

Hira said the industry deep pockets had short-circuited the whole policy process, and that by adding the proposal to the budget bill lobbyists had succeeded in giving lawmakers a free pass to vote in favor of the added visas.

"In the end, with the up or down for vote by the House and Senate,
Congressmen and Senators will have plausible deniability, so they can tell industry groups they supported it, and tell workers that 'we didn't support it but our hands were tied.' The legislators are off the hook and they don't have to go on the record," Hira said.

Currently the H-1b cap stands at 65,000, plus a 20,000 exemption for graduate students added last year. The H-1b visa employer-paid fee now stands at $3,185, and L-1 visa fees, used to bring management employees into the U.S., are $685.

Hira said that although workers would always be outgunned by industry in terms of campaign donations and lobbying, they could win by
making the issue a political campaign, with political consequences for lawmakers that make a political calculation to look the other way when abuses about the visa system are raised.

"This is a marathon, this is one of the major advantages the industry has, such deep pockets that they can have people keep working this issue, and they have a lot more stamina than us, so we have to be persistent and keep pushing it," Hira said.


Jeff Nachtigal writes about worker issues. Reach him at: jnachtigal@washtech.org

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