washington technology companies in the us looking to hire professionals from abroad are scrambling to complete formalities for coveted h1b visas for 2008 which will be issued during a short period beginning april 2indian professionals are among those expected to benefit from the exercisethere are a total of 85000 visas that will be processed by the us customs and immigration services of which 20000 are reserved for workers who hold a us masters or doctorate degreethere are additional visas available for those who works in centres of higher learning nonprofit institutions and government research organisations last year the cap was reached in junehaving worked for several months to identify workers for whom well need to secure h1b status we are as prepared as we can be hewlet packards immigration policy manager leslie nicolett has said in a statementsilicon valley companies have lobbied congress to increase the number of h1b visas doled out each year arguing their innovative edge is at risk when theyre unable to fill job openingshowever unemployed tech workers and grassroots organisations assert there are enough talented american workers ready to fill those slots but theyre not willing to accept the lower wages that companies can pay immigrants the san jose mercury news reportedthe pr people are preying on americans fear norman matloff a professor of computer science at the university of california who is critical of h1b visas said on the tech industrys purported concern about the loss of innovation the government does not release data on how many h1b visas individual companies receive and silicon valleys major tech companies declined to disclose how many they want or obtainedbut several web sites have posted lists showing intel oracle and cisco systems among the top 20 sponsors of h1b visas in recent years the report saidthe insufficient number of visas creates problems when a company cant hire even a handful of workers said lowell sachs sun microsystems senior manager for federal government affairsyoure going to start losing your edge compared to competition as a result sun pushes managers to anticipate more than a year in advance who theyll want to hirethats not great for a company to do sachs said there are always new developments coming up that you need to be able to jump on top quickly he saidindustry leaders like bill gates are constantly goading congress to tear down the existing numbers structure and capitol hill has been under varying degrees of pressure to improve the situationthe issue was a part of the senate package on immigration reform in the 109th congress which failed to get anywhere as republican and democratic law makers could not get into a conference on widely varying immigration billslaw makers in the 110th congress are a long way off from any agreement on a comprehensive package but the senate version in the 109th congress had called for nearly doubling the current levels of h1bs from the current 65000 annual cap and yearly increasesthe version of immigration bill that cleared the