Washington: Stressing that foreign expats have "long contributed" to raising American living standards, a US association of immigration lawyers has slammed Congress for its "failure" to reform the "broken system" to meet the country's legitimate labour needs.

Due to existing caps on the highly-skilled H1B visas, the domestic companies were facing the music as specialised job quotas were filled up on the first day of application itself, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) said.

"For most Americans, the beginning of April signifies the start of spring. For others, it means Opening Day of the baseball season. But for US employers, April first marks the day that US Citizenship and Immigration Services begins accepting new H-1B visa petitions for 2009," it said. "And once again, America's companies will be left in the lurch as the sparse annual allotment of H-1B visas will be reached on the very first day," the association said.

Kathleen Campbell Walker, President of the AILA said "Unfortunately, this striking failure to support America's global competitiveness is not a poor April Fool's Day joke; it is the result of Congressional inaction and failure to reform our broken immigration system to meet legitimate labour needs".

Walker further asked in a statement "Since when did the saying If it s broke, don t fix it ever make sense?" Presently, the number of H-1B visas is capped at 65,000, plus 20,000 for graduates of US universities advanced degree programmes.

Once the cap is reached, the process shuts down for another 18 months, preventing many companies from hiring vitally needed workers.

Source : PTI