The Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted that 1.3 million jobs will be created in the computer and IT fields through 2006, requiring an average of 138,000 new IT workers in the U.S. job market per year (American Immigration Law Foundation, Immigration Policy Reports (Companies Face Grave Shortages of Programmers, 2000). One of the problems that the computer industry is having is that, "knowledge and techniques in the software industry change rapidly. A software engineer who learned programming 20 years ago doing assembly programming on mainframe computers will require at least 1 to 2 years to learn today's programming languages, and yet another 1 to 2 years to reach the efficiency and reliability of an engineer who learned those languages from the beginning. .
How can the computer industry compensate for the lack of trained employees? According to the American Immigration Law Foundation Immigration Policy Reports, foreign-born workers can fill the gap and foreign immigrant tech workers are not new to America. In the past, immigrants were recruited as engineers, scientists and students, mostly from South Asia. They were offered visas and were specifically recruited to advance the military technology during the Cold War. More recently, the high-tech private sector is also seeing a need for foreign workers to fill jobs. Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has just proposed to restrict non-citizens from working in some parts of the computer industry. DOD's view is that the immigrant workers may be valuable; however, they are still outsiders (Jayadev, 2001). .
The leader in technology, Microsoft, is addressing the shortage by recognizing that the education market is moving rapidly in a new direction. On-line college degrees and training programs have become the method of choice for many individuals desiring the flexibility that computer based education offers (Microsoft Press Pass, 1997).