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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Gates asks for eased visa limits

Richard Roesler Staff writer

SEATLE – Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates renewed his call Wednesday to ease immigration restrictions that he fears are putting American technology companies at a competitive disadvantage.

“The delays, the limitations, the complexities are keeping people out,” Gates said of the restrictions while advocating for greater government spending on schools and universities at a meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Seattle. “I think that’s a problem.”

Strong universities, he said, act as an “IQ magnet,” drawing brilliant people from around the globe. By tightening visa restrictions for students and workers, America has recently made it much tougher for those people to come here, he said.

As schools in China and India turn out ever-better graduates, he said, the nation must stay competitive.

“I don’t think there’s anything inherent in our skill set that gives us an enduring advantage,” Gates said. America’s biggest strength, he said, is “the momentum for risk-taking,” entrepreneurship and venture capital.

Although hardly the first time Gates has pushed for easing new restrictions in the H1-B visa program, his comments Wednesday indicate the Microsoft founder is taking his message beyond Washington, D.C. Like many technology company executives, Gates has lobbied Congress and the White House for relaxed restrictions on the hiring of foreign high-tech workers.

But his comments Wednesday came just three days after federal authorities confirmed they are investigating the possibility that potential terrorists are using phony college diplomas allegedly sold by a Spokane company to circumvent U.S. immigration rules, specifically those involving H1-B visas. Under the federal program, nearly 52,000 foreign workers who can show they already possess high-tech training are expected to be approved for hiring by U.S. employers this year.

Meanwhile, Gates told the gathering of state lawmakers from across the nation that technology will continue advancing even faster: student computers cheaper than textbooks; cheaper health care due to better medical communication; and computer displays that are easier on the eyes than paper.

“We’re just at the beginning of this,” Gates said in an interview conducted by University of Washington President Mark Emmert. “In the next 10 years, we’ll make as many advances as we have in the last 30.”

But Gates – who famously dropped out of Harvard as a junior – warned that government must keep investing in the colleges and public schools that fuel that growth. It’s no accident, he said, that computer industry and biomedical jobs tend to blossom around good universities. For such industries, Gates said, good universities matter a more than local tax breaks. Education, he said, “trumps all things.”

In fact, a 13-year-old Gates and his friend Paul Allen got their computing start at the University of Washington, where Allen’s father worked at the time. At a point when computer time was an expensive, tightly-managed resource, the two would sneak out after midnight and get access to several computers at the school.

Promoting education is nothing new for Gates. In February, he startled the nation’s governors, telling them that the high school system was “obsolete” for the coming tasks. Schools must bolster math and science education, he said, to keep the nation’s economy strong.

“The fastest-growing major in the United States,” he said, “is physical education.”

A day after a new software “worm” hit computers across the country, Gates also said that better security and better tools for fighting spam – or electronic junk mail – are on the way.

“I probably get more spam than anyone,” Gates said. “I was offered a college degree. … I got another one where they said they’d pay all my legal costs for just a few dollars a month.”