Net slump threatens foreign workers

High tech workers: No job, no visa

Thousands of foreign workers in America's high technology sector are set to lose their jobs and as a result, their right to stay in the US, because of the slump in the Internet sector.

In the past few years, the US government has given hundreds of thousands of foreigners with high-tech skills H1-B temporary work permits.

But if they are laid off, they are not allowed to remain in the US, or begin another job, unless they have another visa application pending.

The collapse of many Internet start-ups and recent layoffs in Silicon Valley mean that tens of thousands of high-tech workers, mainly from India, China and western Europe, could be forced to return home.

It is not known how many have already lost their jobs, or could lose them in the near future.

Slump in high-tech stocks has led to lay-offs

But Immigration officials say many workers have been fired without notice and therefore have no time to file a new application.

It is believed many may try to stay on in America illegally.

Application drop

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) says it does not have up-to-date figures of how many immigrants employed by the high-tech industry have lost their jobs.

But the INS has reported a 30% drop in H-1B visa requests.

Last year, technology firms exhausted the annual quota of 115,000 high-tech permits in the first six months of the fiscal year.

In October 2000, after much lobbying by Silicon Valley, Congress increased the quota to 195,000.

But from then until the beginning of March this year, the INS says it only approved 72,000 visa applications, compared with more than 100,000 in the same period a year before.

Critics of the high-tech visa scheme say it favours foreign workers to the detriment of American nationals.

They have argued there is no labour shortage in the US, but that technology firms prefer to hire foreign workers because they tend to demand less.