more...

DOBBS: Turning now to the war on our middle class. Big business demanding Congress make it easier for foreign workers to take American jobs. Kitty Pilgrim reports now on how that demand is putting our working middle class at risk.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The nation's business lobby wants to give visas to more foreign high-tech workers. They instituted language in a bill introduced by representatives Gutierrez and Flake to increase the number of high tech visas available to foreign workers. They say putting a cap on the H1B visas would force U.S. companies to outsource jobs.

ROBERT HOFFMAN, COMPETE AMERICA: When you talk about offshoring, the problems of offshoring, this visa cap is promoting offshoring. And that's why we want to reform it.

PILGRIM: Congress limits the number of H1B visas to 65,000 a year. But USCIS approves thousands more than that. Twenty-seven thousand five hundred more are allowed in for non-profits and educational institutions, another 20,000 for foreign students at U.S. universities to stay and work after graduation.

Even with that staggering number of visas, some claim there should be no limit on the number of foreign tech workers who can come to live in the United States.

BILL GATES, MICROSOFT FOUNDER: Now we face a critical shortage of scientific talent. And there's only one way to solve that crisis today: open our doors to highly talented scientists and engineers who want to live, work and pay taxes here.

PILGRIM: But some say there's absolutely no shortage of American workers, because jobs are scarce and wages are flat. In fact, a recent GAO report says companies pay H1B visa holders less.

PAUL ALMEIDA, AFL-CIO: U.S. tech workers are out of work twice as long as they have been in the past. The average tech worker is out for work upwards of ten months. If there was truly a shortage, this duration would be a month or less for them to find work.

PILGRIM: The bill proposes increasing the limit of H1B visas to 115,000, with a 20 percent raise each year, and would allow foreign students with advanced degrees in math, science or technology to work without a visa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PILGRIM: Now, this bill pays lip service to helping American workers, saying employers must search for U.S. workers first. But business groups like Compete America admit it really would help them recruit foreign students as they graduate from U.S. colleges and allow them to stay and work in the United States -- Lou.

DOBBS: Those here legally and who could be given work visas, that's great. But what these companies are really doing, whether it's on our border, on Capitol Hill, they're really saying to this Congress and this president, who listens, of course, that regulation doesn't matter. Public policy doesn't matter.

That corporate America has a better idea of what this nation should be than the rest of us fools who make up the body politic. This is elitist arrogance of the worst sort.

PILGRIM: Well, it's very clear that they want no limits whatsoever. And they're trying to get that.

DOBBS: And yet we have the most generous legal immigration policies in the world, by far.

Kitty, thank you very much. Kitty Pilgrim.