New Rules For H-1BsNew Rules For H-1Bs

Does the United States need to import brain power? Congress last week voted yes, agreeing that 20,000 foreign-born students who earned master's or Ph.D. degrees from U.S. colleges should be exempt from the cap for H-1B visas. President Bush is expected to approve it.

The United States issues 65,000 H-1B visas a year--a cap that was met on Oct. 1, the first day of the fiscal year. Supporters of that cap say too many H-1Bs go for work that doesn't require hard-to-find specializations and merely imports cheap labor.

But more than half of the master's and Ph.D.s for math, science, and engineering granted by U.S. universities are earned by foreign students, according to lobbying groups supporting the exemption.

Congress tightened rules on the less-restrictive L-1 visa, which some companies have used to import low-cost programmers. A new provision requires an L-1 candidate working off-site to be "controlled and supervised" by the company that sought the L-1.