Computer industry caught in a numbers crunch

Robert Walley

February 9, 1998
Web posted at: 11:04 p.m. EST (0404 GMT)

From Correspondent Fred Katayama

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Gemini Systems has a problem.

The New York computer consulting company needs code-crunchers, and they are not alone. Industry reports say that nearly 200,000 such jobs in the United States are unfilled.

Most of the qualified people are non-U.S. workers who are in this country on visas, which are designated H-1B. But the cap on H-1B visas is 65,000, and the government expects to issue all of them by May.

And that's the reason managers at Gemini are worried.

Robert Walley, executive vice president of Gemini, says that unless his company and others are able to find a new source of workers, "it would increase the prices of the resource pool. The people out there looking for jobs, they're demanding premium salaries now, and it will just drive that higher."

The government acknowledges that technology represents half the country's economic growth, but it also insists that education and retraining U.S. workers is a priority rather than letting in more skilled immigrants.

"I certainly don't want to simply open up the floodgates and raise our own levels in terms of high-tech visas," says Labor Secretary Alexis Herman.

"It sounds very nice, but a company can't wait," says immigration attorney Allen Kaye. "And if it needs an H-1 worker, it needs one right away, so in the end training local workers may be the solution. But that's a long-term solution."

And long-term solutions in high technology often become moot.

Programmer Sunil Kapur

"Six or 10 years down the line," says Sunil Kapur, a computer programmer for Gemini, "it's not going to make a difference where you do your work, 'cause it's going to zip across the whole globe in a matter of minutes or seconds."

But for now, the industry is in a bind.

In 1996, a report on programs involving international labor said the system was broken, and a Senate subcommittee is scheduled to hold hearings on the issue in about two weeks.

While no one contends the program has been fixed, there is not even data available to show which companies hire the most H-1 visa holders.

Why? Because there are not enough people to update the data.

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