US high-technology comp-anies will be able to hire up to 20,000 of the top foreign graduates from US universities each year as a result of a provision attached to the omnibus spending bill, but they will pay a high price in new fees and restrictions intended to prevent fraud in the visa programme.
The measure, part of the $388bn (£208bn) bill passed by Congress at the weekend, was approved in spite of criticism that unemployment among US technology workers is too high to loosen restrictions on foreign hiring. As a result, US companies that lobbied heavily for the provision, including technology giants such as Microsoft and Oracle, were forced to accept several new measures aimed at limiting the impact on US workers.
