[Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren had proposed an new T-Visa program. It included a $60,000 minimum salary to ensure only geniuses would be able to get them. Note what here press secretary has to say about that salary in Silicon Valley.]

http://www.redherring.com/insider/1999/0809/news-techvisa.html

Vis-a-visa

By Julie Landry
Redherring.com
julie@redherring.com
August 9, 1999

Taking another stab at solving the high-tech labor shortage in her
district, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D: Calif.) of Silicon Valley introduced a
bill Tuesday night that would establish a new "T," or tech, visa. The
bill would grant five-year visas to foreign math, science,
engineering, and computer science graduates of American universities.

To obtain the proposed visa, the student's salary would have
to exceed $60,000 a year -- "peanuts in the Valley," according to Ms.
Lofgren's press secretary -- to avoid wage undercutting. Employers
would also pay a $1,000 filing fee toward a high-tech education fund.

The new tech visas would also be unlimited, unlike the existing
115,000 three-year H-1B visas allotted for this year. In 1997 and
1998, companies hit the cap on H1-B visa allotments for the first time
ever. This year the limit was reached in mid-June.

Salaries in the tech-driven Valley are among the highest in
the nation, inflated by the need for competent "wetware" -- geek slang
for programmers and engineers. Last year 346,000 openings for
programmers, systems analysts, and computer scientists sat unfilled,
according to a 1998 study by the Information Technology Association of
America.

DRY MARKET FOR WETWARE
The shortage is a signal that "the value system is changing in the new
knowledge-based economy," says Dominique Black, chairman and CEO of
Advanced Technology Staffing, a contracting agency in the heart of
Silicon Valley.

But Mr. Black says because of the speed of technological innovation,
the highest demand he sees is for engineers with more than five years
of experience in a given skill. He adds that the market value for
up-and-coming programming languages also places a strain on hiring and
retaining employees for older legacy systems. "Startups with exciting
technology and a lot of stock options will likely get the lion's share
of employees," says Mr. Black, adding that new high-tech graduates are
driven by higher salaries, quality of life, and technical challenges
-- in that order.

Yet even startups like the online event-managing company SeeUthere.com
are feeling the squeeze for qualified applicants. John Chang, the
company's chief operating officer, says there just aren't enough
skilled Web designers and applications developers, both of whom are
necessary when developing a new product.

"There are plenty of straight programmers in the Valley," says Mr.
Chang, "but there are very few people who can take business logic and
translate it into software code."

PLEASE DON'T GO
Mr. Chang says his company's product launch was delayed by the dry
talent pool and the backlogs in H-1B application processing. Before
SeeUthere.com's funding last August, he says, the company filed its
prospective employees' H-1B forms. The approvals took six months to
clear, crippling product development.

Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson notes that the technology
landscape could benefit from not turning away foreign students after
graduation. Mr. Jurvetson says his firm backs many companies
(including SeeUthere.com) with foreign roots, pointing out that in the
Internet age, companies can be founded from anywhere. Rejected H-1B
visa applicants might take their talent and entrepreneurial ideas back
overseas.

"Sabheer Bhatia got his green card literally a month or so before
starting Hotmail," says Mr. Jurvetson. The Web-based email company is
now owned by Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). "Had he been sent home, he
would have just as easily started his company in India, and the U.S.
would have been that much the poorer."

Among other immigrant success stories in Silicon Valley: Third Voice
CEO Eng-Siong Tan, from Singapore, and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) founder
Andy Grove, born in Hungary.

PIERCING THE BUBBLE
It wouldn't be California if there weren't dissenters, though. Norman
Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of
California at Davis, calls Ms. Lofgren's bill "appalling."

Dr. Matloff blames the perceived shortage on "rampant age
discrimination" by employers against older programmers and inefficient
hiring policies. He says "employers are shooting themselves in the
foot" by overdefining job requirements and screening for skills rather
than talent. That error, Dr. Matloff claims, cuts into employers'
productivity and profit margins.

"It is simply not cost-effective to pay someone $10,000 to $15,000
more in salary simply because he or she knows Java," states Dr.
Matloff in a 1998 report, "given that any competent programmer can
learn Java and be productive in it within a couple of weeks."

But for all the hubbub, Ms. Lofgren's bill, if it passes, might not
make too big a dent in the perceived shortage. According to the
Computer Research Association, only 6 percent of students at the
bachelor's level in computer science in 1997-1998 were nonresident
aliens.