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A deep recession and surging unemployment have tamped down the usual frenzied rush of companies filing temporary visa requests to hire skilled foreign workers, and the five-day application period that ended this week has been extended. Immigration officials now will continue to accept H1-B visa petitions until the limit is reached, they said Wednesday, and that could take until the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1.

For Rockwell Scientific Co., hiring the best talent is a matter of corporate survival. Chief Executive Derek Cheung says he simply can't find enough professionals in the United States with the highly specialized skills to produce the sophisticated sensors and other high-technology products the Thousand Oaks company makes. And he says changes to a foreign worker visa program threaten the ability of Rockwell Scientific and other U.S.

President Bush's recent call for more visas for skilled foreign workers increases the likelihood that relief is on the way for U.S. technology firms that say they are struggling to fill key positions. In a Feb. 2 speech at the Minnesota headquarters of 3M, the president said it was a "mistake not to encourage more really bright folks who can fill the jobs that are having trouble being filled here in America."

WASHINGTON - Eight senators who have spent weeks trying to write a bipartisan bill to overhaul immigration laws have privately agreed on the most contentious part of the draft - how to offer legal status to the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants. According to aides familiar with the closed-door negotiations, the bill would require illegal immigrants to register with Homeland Security Department authorities, file federal income taxes for their time in America and pay a still-to-be-determined fine.

Microsoft Corp., facing criticism for hiring foreigners while conducting job cuts, said it planned to keep its use of H1-B guest-worker visas at about the same level. The company posted a letter on a blog from general counsel Brad Smith in response to concerns voiced by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). After Microsoft fired an initial 1,400 employees Jan. 22, Grassley wrote to Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, demanding that he fire H1-B visa holders first. Microsoft has been one of the leading advocates for an expansion of the H1-B program.

American companies are so eager to hire highly skilled foreign workers that a cap on new visas has been reached within a matter of days. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Friday that it has received more than 85,000 applications from employers seeking visas for computer programmers, engineers, physicians and other educated workers with specialized skills. Of the total visas, 20,000 are set aside for people with graduate degrees from American universities. Because the 85,000 limit was exceeded within five days of the April 1 opening date, a lottery will be held to distribute the visas.

The Homeland Security Department approved 10,000 more applications for visas for high-tech and specialty workers than Congress permitted for this fiscal year. The mistake was made with H1-B visas, available to foreigners with a bachelor's degree or higher who want to fill U.S. jobs in architecture, engineering, medicine, biotechnology and computer programming.

SELDOM HAS IT BEEN so clear that U.S. immigration policy is counterproductive to U.S. interests as it was on Monday. That's the day companies began filing applications for high-skilled foreign workers -- and it's also the day the quota was filled. Technology companies and other businesses filed more than 100,000 petitions requesting H-1B visas for their employees, easily surpassing the annual 65,000 quota.

The state's technology companies may be getting short shrift in the race to hire coveted high-tech specialists from other nations under a special visa allocation program signed into law last year. Processing delays at the California Service Center of the Immigration and Naturalization Service have put H-1B visa approvals two to six weeks behind similar approvals at the agency's service centers in Nebraska, Texas and Vermont, according to the INS.

Democratic congressional leaders announced a tactical shift Tuesday that opens the door to passage of popular legislation that would expand a program granting temporary visas to skilled foreign workers--a priority of the high-technology industry. Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the Democratic minority leaders, said that they would seek to attach other immigration reforms sought by Latino groups to a different bill.