US high-tech companies are being forced to outsource more jobs overseas because of outdated restrictions on immigration, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told Congress on Wednesday, March 12.

Gates, echoing a longstanding complaint from the technology sector, told a congressional panel that the US immigration system “makes attracting and retaining high-skilled immigrants exceptionally challenging for US firms.”

“Congress’s failure to pass high-skilled immigration reform has exacerbated an already grave situation,” Gates said in remarks prepared for delivery to a hearing of the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee.

“As a result, many US firms, including Microsoft, have been forced to locate staff in countries that welcome skilled foreign workers to do work that could otherwise have been done in the United States, if it were not for our counterproductive immigration policies.”

Gates said the limits on so-called H-1B visas aimed at highly skilled professionals are far too low for the rapidly growing tech sector.

He said the current cap of 65,000 H-1B visas “is arbitrarily set and bears no relation to the US economy’s demand for skilled professionals.”

The Microsoft founder noted that all the 65,000 visas for the current fiscal year were snapped up in one day last April and that employers are now waiting to apply for visas for fiscal 2009, starting in October.

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