Businessweek has an interesting yet nothing-new story on visas for high-skilled workers in the United States. The program is known as H-1B visas and it was initially created to allow local American companies to hire talent from around the world in fields where the man power is in short supply.

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H1B is the skilled worker visa which allows American companies to hire talent from abroad and sponsor them to work on-site in the country. The preparations for the next year filing has already begun as is apparent from the flier which I got in-my in box few days back.

The issue of foreign workers has always been a contentious one. Although the opinion is still divided on whether the country needs such a program, the issue often gets clubbed with the debate of illegal immigration & reforms and gets buried down in the process.

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A technology based lobby group in US, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) wants United States Congress to drastically raise the annual cap on H-1B visas and give permanent residency to foreign nationals who graduate from U.S. colleges.

An additional demand they had was related to backing trade policies which give companies unfettered access to the global market but I am not able to make much of it. Why will the US government restrict companies from doing business across the world? Unless of course the country in question is Iran or Cuba etc. (Thats what I thought initially but check out the analysis and answers below).

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