Attn: Immigration law reporters

            Why would the University of Illinois (Chicago campus) and the Prince George’s County (Maryland) Public Schools be among the nation’s top beneficiaries of a program that allows U.S. companies to import foreign workers with special skills that are not easily found among American workers?

            The two academic institutions appear on a list of the nation’s top recipients of visas that are made available through the H-1B program for highly skilled workers, such as scientific researchers and computer programmers.

            Expectedly, major U.S. corporations in the high-tech industry—such as Infosys Technologies Ltd., Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Google Inc. and Motorola Inc.—are on the list that was recently compiled by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency within the Dept. of Homeland Security that administers the special visa program.

            So, too, were major accounting and financial consulting firms: Accenture LLP,  Ernst & Young LLP, Deloitte & Touche LLP, and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

            The Top 25 were responsible for approximately 20,000 of the special visas that were handed out last year. This year, USCIS will distribute 65,000 visas so overseas workers can occupy jobs that, theoretically at least, cannot be filled by American workers. Another 20,000 visas are allocated for foreign nationals who have earned advance degrees at a U.S. college, in effect allowing them to trade in their student visas for a visa that allows them to work.

            H-1B visas are in short supply and demand for them is great. To handle the crush of applications, USCIS opened the applications window on April 1 and will close it on April 7. Then, it will conduct a lottery to select the 85,000 recipients of the visas that will be issued in 2008. The visas are good for a three-year period, with an opportunity to apply for a three-year extension.

            The annual scramble for H-1B visas also renewed a debate. U.S. employers want the limit to be increased, but some policymakers question whether some U.S. companies are gaming the system to replace expensive American workers with cheap foreign labor.

            Yesterday (April 1), the American Immigration Lawyers Association, whose members earn fees by helping their clients resolve their visa difficulties, called the limit on H-1B visas “a poor April Fool’s Day joke.”

            “Our history shows that immigrants have long contributed to rising U.S. standards of living, and recent studies reflect a direct correlation between the use of skilled foreign workers and the creation of jobs for Americans,” AILA President Kathleen Walker said. Her comments didn’t specify what she meant by “our history,” nor did it give any examples where an H-1B visa holder created a job for an American.

            At the same time, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) co-wrote a letter to the 25 top H-1B visa recipients with a list of questions about their practices. The employers—including the University of Illinois (Chicago campus) and the Prince Georges County Public Schools—were asked, among other things, to provide job descriptions that are filled by H-1B visa holders and to report the number of American employees who were terminated and replaced by H-1B visa holders during the past five years.

            Durbin and Grassley acknowledged in their letters that the H-1B visas are in short supply, but “the program can’t be allowed to become a job-killer in America. We need to ensure that firms are not misusing these visas, causing American workers to be unfairly deprived of good high-skill jobs here at home.”

Edward Zuckerman, Editor