Study in US get Green card easily...

Get a master's degree from a US university and you could be sitting on an immigration goldmine.

According to reports, a new US Senate proposal would allow limitless H1-B visas and green cards for foreigners with master’s degrees or higher in any field from an American university — or anyone with such credentials in the science, technology, engineering or math fields from abroad.

That number could climb by 20% in each subsequent year, to as high as 180,000 if the previous year's quota was exhausted.

Right now, there's also a 20,000 visa cap beyond the existing H1-B quota for foreigners who have advanced degrees in the US. The new Senate Bill would remove that cap. It would also broaden the exemption from the H1-B limit beyond just those with advanced degrees to include foreigners with 'medical specialty certification based on post-doctoral training and experience in the United States'.

According to government sources, the private sector is woefully inadequate to tackle this perception in the US, even though Nasscom has proposed a "professional visa" which has been forwarded in the CEO's Forum between US and India.

In a statement, Lieberman, who may even run for president in 2008, said, "To remain competitive, American companies need access to highly educated individuals. But today's system makes it difficult for innovative employers to recruit and retain highly educated talent, which puts the US at a competitive disadvantage globally."

The Bill also safeguards these H1-B visas from abuse — it would prohibit companies from advertising jobs solely to H1-B immigrants or indicating preference for such workers. It would limit the number of employees on H1-B to no more than half a company's workforce. It would also double fines for employers that violate H1-B programme requirements.

The Bill drew immediate applause from Microsoft, whose high-powered chairman Bill Gates recently urged Congress again to allow for infinite quantities of the work permits.

But there are other groups that prefer a Bill introduced earlier this year by two other senators, Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin that attempts to prevent H1-B abuse by imposing a number of new obligations on employers.

High-tech companies have protested these obligations as too overbearing. Employers would have to certify that they had made a "good faith" effort to hire an American before taking on an H1-B worker and that the foreigner was not displacing a prospective US worker. That Bill's sponsors on Monday issued inquiries to a number of Indian companies, targeting statistics showing some of them were among the top 20 H1-B recipients last year.