Visa Issues  Vex Tech Workers, Their Employers
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Dawn M. Lurie knows how to wake up her audiences when she briefs personnel managers on immigration law: She points out that in some cases executives could face criminal penalties for hiring immigrants without the right visas.
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Governments cannot prevent inexorable job migration
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US tech companies aren&#39;t just sending work overseas. They&#39;re also trying to hire more foreign workers in the USA. Congress approved 20,000 new visas for skilled foreign workers this month.
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(InfoWorld) - Credit-card payments giant Visa is hoping to shed new light on problems like consumer data theft and identity fraud through a conference that will bring together leaders from the business, government, and technology communities to discuss security for the electronic payments industry. Hosted in partnership with the publishing arm of Harvard Business School, the day-long set of briefings is being held March 8 in Washington under the banner "Maintaining Trust in Payments Summit." In a series of panels, controversial topics like the amount of time companies should be allowed to wait before disclosing data breaches to card issuers and consumers will be up for debate, as will the role of the government in providing protection for consumers and industry. The list of scheduled speakers for the event includes Visa CEO John Philip Coghlan, business leaders like eBay CEO Meg Whitman, executives from retailer Nordstrom and Wells Fargo Bank, and a representative from ChoicePoint, the consumer data collection firm that was involved in one the most notorious electronic records mishaps ever reported. Public sector heavyweights will also take part, including Homeland Security cyber-czar Greg Garcia. Visa controls the world's largest payment system. Like other payment companies, Visa finds itself at the center of a rapidly-changing fraud landscape driven by the spread of Internet usage and malicious software. "The reality is that payment security is a complex issue, and the only way to reach a solution is to have an open and honest dialogue," said Rosetta Jones, vice president of corporate relations for Visa USA. "The goal for us was to bring together leaders from the technology, retail, law enforcement, and financial industries to raise the consciousness of data security among all the partners involved with payment systems." The emphasis will be on shared responsibility among the many players involved in combating the exposure of sensitive consumer records and related fraud, Jones said. Developers of payment systems applications used in point-of-sales devices will also participate in this year's summit in the name of expanding the debate. Visa considers application vendors crucial pieces of the payment security puzzle. Robert C. Cresanti, the chief privacy officer and undersecretary of Commerce for Technology, said that it's not useful to get caught up in the blame game or focus too much on single any aspect of improving security for records and payment systems. Cresanti said that the government's first objective in trying to improve the situation must be to "clean up its own house" in terms of reviewing the manners in which it gathers, stores, and protects data. There also needs to be a better understanding in both the private and public sectors of how the exposure of electronic records has truly affected the growth of identity fraud, according to the expert. "We're in an environment where these issues are forcing companies to make decisions between profits and losses every day, we see punishment in stock prices for those who have had incidents, and loss of consumer trust," Cresanti said. "We need to examine how we can put a fine edge on things to ensure that people are careful with the information they collect and hold while creating better public awareness of what is actually going on." But media attention to data breaches may be creating too much awareness of the threat of data loss and too little understanding of the underlying causes, said analyst James Van Dyke  of Javelin Strategy and Research. Van Dyke plans to devote part of his time speaking on a show panel about a recent report produced by his company that contends identity theft led to fewer related losses in 2006 ($49.3 billion) than in 2005 ($55.7 billion) despite a mounting number of consumer records that have been lost or stolen. "The biggest issue might be that too many people take simplistic view and assume that it's all about the Internet and data breaches, but it's really much more varied than that," said Van Dyke. "It's very much a shared problem, and merely handing out blame is unhelpful in terms of addressing the real issues." Avivah Litan, analyst with Gartner, said that businesses walk a thin line when deciding about the reporting of potential breaches to customers and partners, including credit card issuers like Visa. The business community is anxious to point out that every breach is different and that the exposure of credit card data has not proven as disastrous for consumers as some parties have predicted, she said. Litan will host a panel discussion at the summit that, among other topics, will discuss the media's approach to handling data breach stories and whether or not the press has become too sensational in reporting some of the incidents. "Companies have taken a lot of heat for not disclosing breaches faster, but they've been doing so in part because of their work with law enforcement -- they want to get that out and try to come to some consensus about how to handle these situations while catching the crooks," said Litan. "Issuers want to know immediately, but criminals will hide if they know they're being watched; there's a need for some system in place that better serves the needs of all parties."
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SANTIAGO, Dominican Republic -- Baseball union head Donald Fehr has heard rumors about the possibility U.S. authorities could deny or restrict work visas for foreign players mentioned in reports of use of performance-enhancing drugs.
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Some users of the new operating system are having a tough time connecting to the virtual world.
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Credit-card payments giant Visa is hoping to shed new light on problems like consumer data theft and identity fraud through a conference that will bring together leaders from the business, government, and technology communities to discuss security for the electronic payments industry.
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Company plans to open a software development center later this year in Vancouver, partly because of immigration issue.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft will open a software development office in Vancouver, Canada, later this year, in part as a way to retain talented workers who can't stay in the U.S. because of immigration laws. Software developers from around the world will staff the center, which will allow Microsoft to keep skilled workers who are affected by U.S. immigration issues, the company said in a statement Thursday. Microsoft, along with other high-tech companies, has been a vocal supporter of legislation that would increase the number of foreign workers allowed to stay in the U.S. Proposed amendments to the current foreign worker regulations were part of a larger controversial immigration bill that stalled in the U.S. Congress last week. Without new regulations, companies across the country are competing for 65,000 H-1B visas issued each year. "This is especially a problem for Microsoft because it's so big and doing so much hiring," said Susannah Malarkey, executive director of the Washington Technology Alliance, an association of companies promoting education and an entrepreneurial environment in the state. "If you can't use visas to bring people in, you have to take the jobs to where the people are," she noted. Companies like Microsoft can "either create a worksite in the country of origin of these people or lose out on them altogether," she said. In addition to its Redmond headquarters, Microsoft already has development centers in Ireland, Denmark, Israel, and North Carolina. The Vancouver location is in part attractive because of its proximity to Redmond, Microsoft said. Microsoft did not reveal the Vancouver facility's size or precise location.
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Many don&#39;t realize they are eligible; others feel application forms are too complicated to fill out. By Justin Pope / Associated Press.
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Business & money: Technical problems are preventing taxpayers from filing their self-assessment forms
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Congress is letting employers hire 20,000 more foreign high-tech workers under a special visa program after businesses reached the annual ceiling on the first day of the government&#39;s fiscal year.
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ATHENS, Dec. 7 (IPS) - Immigration and dealing with migrant workers has  perennially been a problem for countries across Europe, but  nowhere more than in Greece. Huge problems remain unsolved while  the country attempts to match the requirements of EU law.
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WASHINGTON -- Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates said the United States should end limits on visas for skilled foreign workers as part of plan to boost US economic competitiveness.
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MOSCOW, Jan 24 (IPS) - Authorities have started granting work permits to  some six million illegal immigrants from the ex-Soviet republics  that have visa-free travel agreements with Russia. But the  workers would be banned from working in certain areas.
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Some businesses and lawmakers are worried that new identification requirements going into effect Thursday at the borders with Canada and Mexico could create widespread confusion and delays and discourage some people from making the trip.
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(InfoWorld) - Putting new restrictions on H1-B visas in the U.S. would be a barrier to trade, the president of a large Indian trade association said Wednesday. The remarks come in response to an inquiry by two U.S. senators into alleged misuse of the visas. Trade between the U.S. and India is two-way, and U.S. companies like Dell , Microsoft, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard are benefiting from higher sales of computers and software to India's IT industry, according to India's NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies). NASSCOM made public on Wednesday contents of a letter about the issue, which it sent to U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley and Richard Durbin, who are investigating the alleged misuse of H1-B visas. It appears that companies are using H1-B visas to displace qualified, American workers, Grassley said in a statement earlier this month. New provisions proposed by the senators to ensure that H1-B visas are being used to meet a worker shortage and not to replace U.S. workers have been included in a bipartisan compromiseÂ immigration bill currently before the U.S. Senate. Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, and Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, earlier this month wrote to nine Indian companies, asking them for details on their use of the H1-B visas. NASSCOM said it had sent letters on behalf of the nine Indian companies to the senators. The nine companies together account for close to 20,000 H1-B visas, the senators said on their Web sites. Among the companies that received these letters were India's top outsourcers Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro. NASSCOM considers the issue of work permits like the H1-B visas and intracompany transfers from India to the U.S. as a trade issue that should not be confused with immigration issues. "We want to avoid this being confused as an immigration issue, particularly because it has come up in an immigration bill," NASSCOM's president Kiran Karnik said. India's minister for commerce and industry, Kamal Nath, has also warned of repercussions on ongoing World Trade Organization negotiations if there were any attempts to restrict H1-B visas. NASSCOM particularly objects to a clause in the immigration bill that prohibits companies from hiring H1-B employees if they employ more than 50 people and more than 50 percent of their employees are H1-B visa holders. This prohibition will affect the U.S. operations of Indian outsourcing companies as often they have to take staff from India to work on clients' projects, according to Karnik. These workers are in the U.S. on H1-B visas because they have the knowledge and experience to handle clients' requirements, Karnik said. It is also difficult for Indian companies to hire technical staff in the U.S., because of a tight labor market, he added. Taking staff from India on H1-B visas is not a way to get cheap labor, according to Karnik. The rules of the H1-B visa program allow H1-B visa holders to change jobs within the U.S., and market forces ensure that wages cannot be artificially suppressed, he added. The H1-B visa is an employer-sponsored, nonimmigrant work visa for a foreign worker coming temporarily to the U.S. to perform services in a specialty occupation. Indian outsourcing companies depend on these visas as a significant proportion of their staff work at client locations in the U.S. NASSCOM and some U.S. technology companies have asked for an increase in the current H1-B visa cap, which limits the number of visas annually to 65,000. In its letter to the senators, NASSCOM also mentioned that the largest outsourcing contracts from the Indian private sector, as also from the Indian government, have gone to U.S. companies. It said Indian students now form the biggest group of foreign nationals studying in U.S. universities, spending an estimated $3 billion a year. India is a major buyer of a whole host of U.S. goods and services, including aircraft, wheat, branded garments, and accessories, and the rapidly growing Indian economy is importing ever-larger quantities of these goods and services, NASSCOM said.