Friday, May 26 2006 13:12 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: The US Senate has approved a landmark immigration reform bill that would give citizenship to millions of illegal persons and double the number of H1B visas from the present 65,000, a move that would greatly benefit thousands of Indian software professionals.

The Bill passed yesterday provides for doubling the H1 Bvisas from the present 65,000 annually to about 115,000 and with a 20 per cent increase on an annual basis.

Various software and technology companies like Microsoft and Intel have been pressurising the US government by threatening to move jobs abroad if it does not raise the cap on H1 B visas and allow more skilled workers into the country.

In the version that cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee was also a new student visa classification for high tech studies.

However, the House version of the Bill has nothing on the H1 B visa and according to analysts it is most likely to be neglected when legislators get down to the negotiations at the conferrence committee stage.

The main provision of the Bill is however to provide nearly 10 million to 12 million illegal living in America citizenship rights that was denounced in many quarters as downright amnesty and something that House of Representatives has nothing to say when it passed the immigration legislation late last year.

The US Senate cleared the Bill with a 62-32 comfortable margin but threw up the deep split between the majority Republican Party and the Conservatives.