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Updated at 12:57 p.m. PDT to add the Democratic leadership's comments.

WASHINGTON--The U.S. Congress won't be beefing up the number of H-1B visas anytime soon, the chief legal adviser to an influential Republican predicted Monday.

Proposals to raise the annual H-1B cap would sail through Congress if called up for a floor vote, but political considerations mean that probably won't happen anytime soon, said George Fishman, chief counsel to the Republican side of a U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee panel on immigration.

That's because the Democratic leadership, including House Speaker Nancy … Read more

A Pittsburgh computer consulting company accused of showing a preference for H-1B temporary visa holders in its job vacancy ads has agreed to pay a $45,000 fine as part of a settlement with the federal government.

During a monthlong period in spring 2006, the firm iGate Mastech published 30 job postings, that, by the U.S. Department of Justice's description, "expressly favored H-1B visa holders to the exclusion of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and other legal U.S. workers." That behavior violates the Immigration and Nationality Act's provisions, which bar employment discrimination based … Read more

This year, Congress must raise the cap on H-1B temporary work visas beloved by technology companies, a coalition of conservative Republican politicians urged Democratic leaders late last week.

In a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Friday, 30 members of the U.S. House of Representatives Republican Study Committee called for a vote within the next few months to raise the quota. By law, that limit currently stands at 65,000, with an additional 20,000 allocated for foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. institutions.

Here's a snippet:

The number of petitions for H-1B temporary workers filed for next year increased overall by about 20 percent this time around, U.S. immigration officials said this week.

On Tuesday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it had closed this year's application window, having received more than enough petitions to meet a congressionally mandated cap of 65,000 visas and fill another 20,000 slots for foreigners holding advanced degrees from U.S. universities. But it didn't immediately reveal the number of petitions it had received.

USCIS said on Thursday that according to a "preliminary" … Read more

If you've been waiting for something revolutionary to replace Canon's two-year-old XL H1 HDV model, then it's not quite time for the fireworks. Instead, the company's delivering a modestly enhanced version in conjunction with a feature-reduced, but significantly less expensive spin-off.

Like its fixed-lens, handheld counterparts, the XH A1 and XH G1, the XL H1 now splits into two personalities: the $8,999 H1S, which, like the original H1, will come replete with the HD SDI, Genlock, and SMPTE timecode support necessary for operation in a multicam environment when it ships this June, and the H1A, … Read more

Editor's note: This blog was updated at 1:02 p.m. PDT with comments from the high-tech industry.

As predicted by high-tech companies months ago, U.S. immigration officials said Tuesday that they've received more than enough petitions for next year's batch of H-1B temporary worker visas and would be considering no more of them.

A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman said the agency won't say until later this week exactly how many applications it received since the application window opened on April 1. (The agency characterized the number, not surprisingly, as "high&… Read more

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has given high-tech companies a piece of good news: foreign graduates of American universities won't necessarily be forced to go home before companies have a chance to hire them on temporary work visas.

The new rule announced late Friday will allow recent graduates with science, technology, engineering, or mathematics degrees to stay in the country for 29 months, instead of the previous 12 months, if they're participating in an off-campus on-the-job training program related to their field of study.

The "stopgap measure" appears to be directly related to persistent … Read more

The window for U.S. companies to submit their H-1B visa applications for next year opens today and ends on Monday. And Google's not very happy about the details.

Neither are Microsoft and other tech companies. They want the government to increase the number of visas that companies can get to hire foreign workers. More than 150,000 applications are expected to be submitted this year, more than double the annual limit of 65,000.

Most large technology companies point to hundreds of job listings that they can't fill because of the lack of qualified U.S. candidates, … Read more

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--The politically explosive debate over millions of undocumented U.S. workers appears to be smothering high-tech companies' attempts to obtain higher allotments of H-1B temporary visas and green cards, Oracle's head lobbyist suggested Wednesday.

Any "rational" politician understands those longstanding pleas to bring in more skilled foreigners for gaps where no qualified Americans fit, said Robert Hoffman, who also serves as co-chairman of a coalition of high-tech companies called Compete America that lobbies for heightened visa caps. By his estimation, if that issue were severed from the rest of the immigration debate, it would "… Read more