Good tech workers are hard to find. But as a U.S. Senator calls for ending limits on high-tech immigration, foreign countries fret that the U.S. is siphoning off their best talent. In response to the U.S. moves, the Australian Minister for Information Technology, Senator Richard Alston, now says that he will push for a relaxation of restrictions on immigration of IT professionals to this country.

In India, which supplies nearly half of the immigrants entering the U.S. on H-1B visas specifically designated for high-tech workers, there are rising fears of a "brain drain," said Rajesh Srivastava, president of the Silicon Valley Indian Professionals Association, a professional organization for Indian-born IT workers.

"The problem arises because the lure of overseas opportunities comes very early in an Indian IT professional's career," said Srivastava. In some companies, "the attrition rates are very high" as workers accept job offers from U.S. firms, he said.

India's IT industry pulled in only US$3.8 billion in revenues last year, and employs just 200,000 workers, but its universities graduated some 67,000 computer science students, more than in any other country, according to Indian government figures.

While salaries are rising steeply as the Indian IT market expands, opportunities in the U.S. are still more lucrative, creating a temptation that is hard for many young Indian professionals to resist, he said.

Right now, it's cheaper for high-tech companies to operate in India than in the U.S., but if qualified workers become more scarce, "the rising costs (of attracting workers) may diminish the cost advantage for India," Srivastava said.

McCain: No limits
The problem could get worse. U.S. Sen. John McCain, said Thursday he will seek to eliminate all caps on immigration of foreign high-tech workers.

Other countries are fighting back.

Australia has some 32,000 IT jobs now vacant there, according to Richard Alston, the Australian Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. So it will also increase immigration caps to allow more talented IT professionals into the country.

"The major concern now is that the education sector is unable to meet the heavy demand for staff with even moderate-level IT skills," Alston said.

Alston said that while some 5,000 Australians are now working in Silicon Valley, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

"The cross-fertilization of ideas and cultures has been one of the drivers of the global IT industry," he said. He added that American high-tech professionals might want to consider "Australia's obvious lifestyle and cultural advantages when choosing a workplace."

Problem will get worse
The U.S.'s high-tech problem looks likely to accelerate.

Most estimates place the current number of vacant technology jobs in the U.S. at around 340,000. But the number of vacant jobs in U.S. technology companies is expected to keep rising, and American universities seem unable to pump out qualified graduates fast enough to keep up, observers said.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 1996, the most recent year for which statistics were available, just 24,000 people earned undergraduate degrees in computer science in the U.S. Only 62,000 earned undergraduate engineering degrees that year, agency officials said.

Societal differences also feed the problem, with other nations placing a higher premium on science education than the U.S., some observers said.

"Part of it is a societal issue. You have foreign kids coming here specifically to study computer science, and American kids just aren't as interested in it," said Bill Cook, an immigration attorney at the Los Angeles law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP.

Last year in the entire U.S., only 200 people earned Ph.Ds in computer science, Cook said. Looking at other professions, the difference is stark: Cook noted that in the state of Maryland alone in 1998, some 2,000 new lawyers were admitted to the state bar.

While the H-1B visa program Congress may now expand is expected to help, it can't completely solve the problem, since H-1B workers can only stay in the U.S. for six years, experts said.

No more Americans?
Another reason American companies have such trouble finding qualified tech professionals is that the U.S. unemployment rate has reached near-historic lows.

"American companies are saying, 'We simply can't find Americans to fill these jobs. If they were out there, we'd find them,'" said Ron Storette, an attorney with Proskauer Rose LLP in New York City and an expert in immigration law.

"The unemployment rate is so low now that many of the people left without jobs are basically unemployable. Based on that alone, it seems to me that we need to bring more foreign workers into the U.S.," Storette said.

Next month, when the U.S. Congress returns from its summer break next month, the House and Senate will consider legislation to boost the yearly immigration cap for foreign engineers, programmers, and other professionals to 200,000 from the current 115,000. The increase has the support of many high-tech U.S. high-tech companies.

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