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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 Pelosi, has given the Congressional Hispanic Caucus "veto power" over any immigration-related bill that comes to the House floor, regardless of its popularity, Fishman said at a panel discussion here hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that supports an increase in the H-1B cap.

"The Hispanic Caucus sees it as a bargaining chip to get what they want, which is comprehensive immigration reform, amnesty for illegal immigrants, whatever you want to call it," Fishman said. "Until the Democratic leadership allows legislation (related to H-1Bs) to go to the floor on its own merits, that's the situation we have here."

Fishman's boss, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and has proposed an "emergency" H-1B increase to 195,000 in 2008 and 2009--the highest level since its peak between 2001 and 2003.

Still, increasing the cap is hardly a one-sided issue, with a number of Democrats--particularly those in districts with prominent high-tech companies--onboard as well.

"Democrats are committed to working together toward balanced immigration reform, including H-1B visas, and we are continuing to hold hearings in order to move this issue forward," an aide to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told CNET News.com on Monday.

H-1Bs are temporary work permits that allow foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in their area of specialty to work in the United States for up to six years. Currently, the annual cap stands at 65,000, with an additional 20,000 for foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. universities. This year, U.S. immigration officials reported receiving more than 163,000 petitions for next year's slots within the first five days and are no longer accepting new applications.

Seated alongside Fishman at the Heritage event were two other H-1B proponents similarly pessimistic about changes occurring this year: Kelly Krieger Hunt, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's senior manager for immigration policy, and James Sherk, a Heritage Foundation labor policy fellow. Sherk pointed to a study he and a colleague recently conducted, which estimated the United States will take in an extra $69 billion in tax revenue if 100,000 additional H-1B visaholders are allowed to work each year for the next eight years.

But those positive depictions of H-1Bs are not without controversy. During the question-and-answer session, a representative from a group called the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports more restrictive immigration policies, asked why the panel had been stacked with pro-H1B advocates and suggested every employer applying for the visas should be subject to a full, on-site investigation to verify its authenticity.

Although Smith's brief "emergency" H-1B bill doesn't propose new checks on the system, Fishman said his boss is aware of concerns about their abuse and wants to strike a balance. On the one hand, high-tech companies like Microsoft and Google prize H-1B visas because they say those work permits allow them to fill gaps in their operations for which there is a shortage of qualified Americans. On the other hand, some American programmers say abuse of the system has displaced American workers and depressed their wages.

There's truth to both perspectives, Fishman said, adding that the Department of Labor isn't as well-equipped to fight suspected fraud in the H-1B program as it could be. Part of the reason, he said, is that the system is based on "attestations" from employers that they're hiring employees with the proper qualifications and at the requisite wage levels, and the Labor Department "has to wait around for some to complain" before it opens an investigation, Fishman said.

"The H-1B program can and usually does operate to the benefit of both American high-tech companies and American workers," he said. "It is the job of Congress to ensure that it always does."

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 on whether the applicant is a U.S. citizen, the Justice Department said.

"We are committed to protecting the right of all authorized workers in the United States against citizenship status discrimination," said Grace Chung Becker, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division, which conducted the investigation and said it would continue to monitor iGate's practices.

In addition to the fine, the settlement requires iGate to train its recruiters and to post a "nondiscrimination statement" on its Web site.

A list of frequently asked questions at the Justice Department's Web site says that in job postings, employers "may not express a preference for H-1B candidates or other individuals requiring sponsorship or employment visas."

An iGate representative did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday. The company, founded in 1986, describes itself on its Web site as a provider of "technical and functional consulting services to Fortune 500 corporations, on the technologies that drive their businesses," with clients including Carnival Cruise Lines, Exxon Mobil, Ford, GE, IBM, and Verizon. It has locations in Europe and Asia and employs about 1,000 people.

The Justice Department's action comes just a few weeks after U.S. immigration officials reported receiving more than 163,000 petitions vying for a congressionally mandated cap of 65,000 visas. Another 20,000 slots are reserved for foreigners holding advanced degrees from U.S. universities. H-1Bs allow foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in their area of specialty to work in the United States for up to six years.

Some members of Congress have proposed doubling or tripling the cap in response to intense lobbying from large high-tech companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Google. They say they need more visas to fill critical gaps in their operations, particularly since so many foreigners obtain math, science, and engineering degrees from American schools, or they'll be forced to move more work offshore. Meanwhile, other politicians have voiced concerns about abuses of the system and have proposed measures that would require employers hoping to hire H-1B workers to do more to seek qualified Americans first.

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:

Every year, American businesses tell us how they are unable to retain the qualified people that they want to retain because of the artificially low H-1B visa caps and related regulations that do not reflect market realities. This situation is ironic, since most of those unemployable people were educated in the United States. As a country, we are effectively handing these highly educated, extremely desirable individuals a diploma and a plane ticket. The message we are sending is: "You can learn here, but you have to work in another country."

TechCrunch, which first reported the letter, has posted a copy here.

The letter came about a week after U.S. immigration officials announced they received more than enough petitions to fill next year's cap and would be selecting recipients through a "lottery" of sorts.

A spokesman for Pelosi said his office had received the document, but he did not offer up any timeline for action.

"Democrats remain committed to working in a bipartisan way to build support for a realistic and balanced approach to immigration reform, including increasing the cap on H-1B visas," spokesman Brendan Daly told CNET News.com.

A number of bills in Congress would raise the H-1B cap, at least for a few years, by double or triple the existing amount. The Republican Study Committee named yet another bill, known as the Skil Act, that would elevate the number of visas to 115,000 and raise the cap by 20 percent after each year in which that bar was met.

In their letter, the Republicans lamented that the debate over skilled, legal immigrants got mixed up in a more stormy debate over illegal immigration, resulting in the unceremonious death of an immigration system overhaul last year. They urged the Democrats to "decouple" the two issues and move H-1B-related legislation "in short order."

The H-1B system, of course, is . Some American computer programmers, allied under a group called Programmer's Guild, argue that allowing more H-1B temporary workers to work in the United States displaces American workers and depresses their wages. There is another contingent in Congress that argues the H-1B system needs changes to prevent abuse.

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" count, it had received more than 163,000 petitions, of which about 31,200 pertained to the visas for advanced degree holders, between April 1 and April 7. Per a recent rule, USCIS plans to conduct a random computer selection process to narrow down the petitions received during those first five days of the application window.

For comparison's sake, last year, USCIS received about 133,000 applications (PDF of press release) within the first two days of the filing window, but only 12,989 of those petitions were filed on behalf of foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. institutions. It wasn't until the end of April that USCIS determined it had received enough petitions to fill the 20,000 cap-exempt spots.

The number of petitions may have climbed a bit more if the Department of Homeland Security hadn't recently declared that filing duplicate applications would result in all of a company's petitions for a particular worker being tossed out.

Those numbers, by the way, don't include renewals for existing employees or certain nonprofit and research institutions that are exempt from the cap, said Chris Ratigan, a USCIS spokesman, despite claims to the contrary by Sen. Chuck Grassley on Thursday.

Grassley and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have voiced concern about abuse of the visas--particularly by Indian outsourcing firms--and have backed a bill that would require employers hoping to hire H-1B workers to do more to fill those posts with Americans first.

In response to ongoing requests from high-tech companies like Microsoft and Oracle, members of the House of Representatives have already proposed doubling or tripling the cap on H-1B visas going forward. And late on Thursday, Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) offered up a measure of their own that would, among other things, raise the baseline H-1B cap to 115,000 and the advanced-degree exemption to 30,000 visas for the next three years. It would also allow the government to "recapture" and redistribute 150,000 unused H-1B visas from previous years and raise the H-1B filing fees by 50 percent (from $1,500 to $2,250).

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" in a press release.) Per a recent rule, immigration officials plan to select visa recipients by using a computer-generated random selection process to narrow down petitions filed within the first five days.

Last year, the rush on H-1B visas ended one day after it began, and immigration officials used a similar "lottery" system to narrow down those applications. Visa petitioners don't like the lottery system because they say it causes them to lose out on potential hires.

The congressionally mandated cap on H-1B visas currently stands at 65,000, with an additional 20,000 made available for foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. universities. USCIS said they had received too many applications in both categories. (To obtain an H-1B visa, a foreigner must hold at least a bachelor's degree in his or her area of specialty.)

Technology companies prize the visas because they say foreign hires are needed to fill gaps in their workforces, but some American computer programmers charge that the program has been abused, leading to depressed wages and displacement of qualified Americans.

High-tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Oracle have been agitating for greater numbers of H-1B visas and green cards for permanent residents. Some members of Congress have proposed doubling or even tripling the annual allotment, which peaked at 195,000 just after the dot-com bust. Others, however, have proposed new obligations for U.S. companies designed to address concerns about visa abuse.

Robert Hoffman, an Oracle vice president, said the "artificially low cap" threatens to deprive U.S. companies of international talent.

"Congress has failed to address the problem as U.S. universities graduate highly educated individuals who leave to work in competitor nations," he said in a statement on behalf of the group Compete America, whose members include Cisco Systems, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and other high-tech companies. "This madness must end this year."

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 complaints by high-tech companies like Microsoft, Google, and Oracle that the annual cap of H-1B temporary visas will be exhausted before they can even lodge applications for this year's crop of graduates. To be eligible for an H-1B, which can be renewed for up to six years, one must hold at least a bachelor's degree in one's area of specialty, but most graduates won't have diploma in hand until May or June, which visa-hungry companies fear is too late.

The extension represents a small victory for the companies in the grand scheme of things, but it could give companies a better chance of being able to secure visas before a foreigner's student status expires--especially if Congress opts to raise the H-1B quota, as some members have already proposed.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began accepting H-1B petitions on April 1 but has not yet announced how many it has received. If the number of petitions filed during the first five days exceeds the baseline allotment of 65,000 visas, plus 20,000 more for students with advanced degrees from U.S. universities, then USCIS plans to select its applications through a random "lottery" that's, not surprisingly, despised by companies vying for the visas.

The "interim" rule applies only to students who are currently enrolled in the 12-month Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, as it's known, with a company that uses Homeland Security's voluntary E-Verify system to check its employees' eligibility to work in the United States.

Microsoft chief lobbyist Jack Krumholtz applauded Homeland Security's action on Monday, saying it "allows U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain the best graduating science, technology, engineering and math students trained at the top U.S. universities," he said in a statement.

"In the past, these students were often unable to remain in the United States for more than a year after completing their degrees because they could not obtain the necessary work visa in spite of being offered gainful employment in highly innovative companies due to the extreme shortage of H-1B visas," he added.

Robert Hoffman, Oracle's chief lobbyist, said the move was important but represented a "band-aid on a much larger crisis." Now Congress needs to boost the number of H-1B visas and make it easier for "the best and brightest" temporary workers to obtain permanent green cards, he said in a statement. (Hoffman is also co-chairman of Compete America, a group composed mostly of Silicon Valley companies that lobbies for more liberal immigration policies.)

American programmers who oppose expanding the H-1B system on the grounds that it displaces qualified Americans and depresses their wages were none too pleased with the new step.

"Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says flooding in more foreign workers 'is a way to bolster the U.S. economy,'" Kim Berry, who heads a vocal group called Programmers Guild, said in an e-mail message about the new rules. "Well, slavery and relaxation (of) child labor laws might 'bolster' the economy too."

Homeland Security said it plans to take comments on the new rule for 60 days, which suggests it could be modified at some point.

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, they say. In the long run, if they can't hire enough skilled workers here, development and engineering offices are more likely to open elsewhere: H-1B concerns already prompted Microsoft to open a new programming center in Vancouver.

Our friends at ZDNet wrote last year that at some point, tech companies are going to conclude "it's not worth the effort to hire foreigners in the U.S." In addition, a recent study concluded that insufficient quantities of visas are actually sending would-be U.S. job openings overseas (or north, to Canada).

Google will be submitting H-1B applications for about 300 people, mostly recent college or graduate school graduates, according to Pablo Chavez, senior policy counsel, and Keith Wolfe, global mobility manager.

"As a technology company, Google's success depends on its ability to attract, hire, and retain the best and brightest wherever they come from," they wrote in a post on the Google Public Policy Blog.

Last year, 248 of Google's visa applications were accepted and 70 were rejected, the post says.

"That's 70 potential U.S. employees who would be creating innovative new Google products, paying taxes, contributing to the U.S. economy, and spurring the creation of additional support jobs at Google," the Google post says.

"If Google and other American companies are unable to hire and employ in the U.S. the world's top scientists, mathematicians, and engineers--many of whom are already here studying at an American university--foreign competitors will and we will lose opportunities to create more jobs and innovate here at home," they conclude.

That's the argument Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates made to Congress last month when he asked that the H-1B visa cap be increased. "It makes no sense to educate people in our universities, often subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, and then insist they return home," he told the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee.

The tech companies have the support of some lawmakers who have proposed doubling or even tripling the cap. But the debate continues with proponents of the status quo arguing that tech companies need to be hiring more American workers instead of giving the jobs to foreigners at lower pay.

According to statistics from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the typical H-1B holder has a bachelor's degree and is making a median salary of $50,000.

News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this story.

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 "easily" sail through Congress and become law.

"As long as Congress holds us hostage to the broader question of comprehensive immigration reform, we're toast," Hoffman said during a panel discussion at the Tech Policy Summit here.

Last year, of course, a proposed H-1B cap increase found itself a casualty of a far more sweeping immigration bill that died amid myriad political clashes. In recent weeks, a number of standalone H-1B proposals have surfaced, proposing anywhere from doubling to tripling the annual cap, but Hoffman seemed pessimistic about the prospects of any such changes, even on a short-term basis, while the broader divisions persist.

The frustrating result of that political skirmish, Hoffman added, is that this year's class of foreign graduates from American universities most likely won't even have a shot at jobs with technology companies in the United States.

That's because the high-tech industry predicts that, when the petition window for next year's crop of visas opens next week, the number of applications will rapidly exceed the cap, just as it did last year, potentially months before the new graduates even have their requisite degrees in hand. The H-1B program allows foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in their area of specialty to work for a company in the United States for up to six years. The annual cap is currently 65,000 new visas--not including renewals and an additional 20,000 for foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. universities.

The H-1B set-up, of course, is not without controversy. A group of American computer programmers called the Programmer's Guild has for years advanced a platform that H-1Bs devalue and displace American workers and that the "shortage" of qualified personnel claimed by technology companies isn't real. Some politicians, including Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), have raised concerns about abuse and proposed requiring U.S. employersto do more to certify that they're giving Americans first dibs on openings before hiring foreigners.

Hoffman, for his part, said his impression is that the idea of allowing more skilled, potentially American university-educated foreigners to work in the United States is really not so contentious, either among politicians or among citizens more broadly.

"If you ask the general public, what's your position on skilled immigration, they'll say, 'Yeah, sure, why not?'" he said. "As opposed to (when you ask) shall we give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship? And (you hear), 'No, heavens no.'"

With another avalanche of petitions for H-1B temporary worker visas expected this year, U.S. immigration officials have adopted a new rule designed to address complaints that some companies are gaming the system.

Apparently, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has been receiving duplicate H-1B applications from companies for the same employee. About 500 duplicate applications were received last year, according to an Associated Press report.

The window for next year's H-1B allotments opens April 1. A new rule adopted Wednesday prohibits the practice of filing duplicate applications. Companies caught in violation will see their applications revoked or denied, and USCIS said it will pocket their application filing fees as well.

The goal of the change, USCIS said, is "to promote equal opportunity for prospective petitioners seeking visas for H-1B workers."

When the number of applications surpasses the annual visa cap set by Congress, USCIS opens a "lottery" of sorts, selecting petitions to approve at random from the first few days of filing. Clearly, if an employer is filing more than one application for the same employee, that raises its odds of getting picked in that pool, which is precisely what USCIS wants to avoid.

In recent years, the number of applications for H-1B visas has exceeded the 65,000 cap set by Congress within the first few days that the application window begins. The first 20,000 applications belonging to foreigners with U.S. master's degrees or higher are exempt from that cap, and petitions filed on behalf of current H-1B workers also don't count against the cap.

There is seemingly a loophole in USCIS's new rule, though: "related" companies--i.e., parent companies and their subsidiaries--are still allowed to submit multiple applications on behalf of the same foreigner for different positions, "based on a legitimate business need," USCIS said.

USCIS also said it also plans to choose from a broader pool of applications if and when the random selection process kicks in. In the past, when the number of applications has exceeded the number of H-1Bs available, USCIS has selected petitions randomly from those filed within the first two days, but starting this year, it plans to select from those filed during the first five days.

It seems questionable whether the changes in the rules will affect criticism of the lottery system, which has been a subject of disdain among H-1B fans and foes alike, particularly since the number of duplicate applications reported last year is so low compared with the overall number of petitions filed.

American technology companies like Microsoft, Google, and Oracle don't like the set-up because they believe they end up unable to hire highly skilled workers to fill gaps in their operations. They would prefer to see Congress double or triple the cap and increase the number of green cards for permanent residents.

Programmer's Guild, a New Jersey-based group that represents American computer programmers and strongly opposes raising the H-1B cap, proposed this week that immigration officials also consider how much companies are committing to pay H-1B applicants and what "national benefit" they would contribute (for example, firms intending to outsource the would-be visa holders need not apply).