US must give 'infinite' H-1B visas: Bill Gates

Slamming American immigration policies, Microsoft Corp chairman Bill Gates told the US Congress on Wednesday that the United States should allow an 'infinite' number of high-skilled foreign workers into the US to fill vacant engineering, computer-programming and other jobs.

There is a "critical shortage' of high-tech workers in America and there is only one way to solve that crisis today: open our doors to highly talented scientists and engineers who want to live, work and pay taxes here," the world's richest man said.

America currently issues 65,000 H-1B visas each year. The visas are quickly taken, mostly by Indian and Chinese tech workers. The H-1B visa limit earlier was 195,000.

He said that the US was shutting the door on the best and the brightest at a time when the country needed them the most. Gates, one of the most vocal in the US industry to constantly plead for an increase in skilled worker visas, told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions that the US must also come to terms with the issue of permanent residency over and above what it intended to do with the H1B visas.

The Senate panel headed by Senator Edward Kennedy was focused on 'Strengthening American Competitiveness for the 21st century' with Gates as the principal witness.

The Microsoft chairperson slammed the visa policy that has now come to heavily restrict foreign-born US college graduates from working in the US and limit citizenship or permanent residency opportunities for scientists and engineers.

"It makes no sense to tell well-trained, highly skilled individuals -- many of whom are educated at our top universities -- that they are not welcome here. We have to welcome the great minds in this world, not shut them out of our country," Gates said.

"Unfortunately, America's immigration policies are driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we need them most."

He also made the point that if the Federal government did not make it easier for foreign scientists and engineers to obtain permanent US residency, the talent would flow to India and China.

Gates was especially critical of the manner in which the US has gone about the H1B visas that has come down from a high of over 200,000 in the 1990s to about 65,000 in present times and efforts to step up the numbers have failed.

"Scientists like Albert Einstein were born abroad but did great work here because we welcomed them," Gates said.

"The contributions of such powerful intellects have been vital to many of the great breakthroughs made right here in America."

He pointed out that the allotments of 65,000 H1B visas in Fiscal 2007 ran out some four months before the year began and for Fiscal 2008 the allotments will be exhausted before graduation ceremonies. "... for the first time ever, we will not be able to seek H1Bs for this year's graduating students. Students can't apply until they get a degree and then they (visas) are already gone," Gates said.

The IT czar also called for simplification of procedures to obtain permanent residency or the so-called Green Card. "We should expedite the path (for foreign workers) into our workforce and into permanent resident status."

These employees are vital to US competitiveness and we should encourage them to become permanent US residents so they drive innovation and growth alongside America's native-born talent," he said.

With inputs from Agencies