Have skills, will travel

Politics | But will Congress allow more educated migrants into the country? | Timothy Lamer

You probably didn't see many H-1B visa holders among the thousands of immigrant protesters who flooded the streets of U.S. cities this month. They were more likely to be in libraries hitting the books or in laboratories doing research.

But that doesn't make their presence in the United States any less controversial. H-1B is the designation the government gives to highly skilled temporary migrants (such as scientists, information technology specialists, and engineers) who come to the United States to work, and part of the immigration debate in Washington concerns how many to allow into the country and what their effect is on the economy.

Current law lets 65,000 H-1B workers, usually from China or India, into the United States per year. The Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed a plan to increase that to 115,000, but so far the House has opposed any expansion. President Bush has called on Congress to "be realistic and reasonable and raise that cap."