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Jobs and Workers • Reg Relief • Tech

Jobs and Workers: H-1B visas are a carrot in the immigration debate.
Reg Relief: SEC will loosen Sarbanes-Oxley provisions for some corporations.
Tech: Office software hosted on-line is the newest twist.

Jobs and Workers
With Congress stymied on immigration ...
Look for the states to take the lead, passing a bevy of bills that run the gamut from denying benefits to illegal immigrants to imposing penalties on their employers.
The measures will have a common theme:
Tough sanctions. The aim of most bills is to make life more difficult for illegals as well as for the employers that hire them.
Arizona’s new law is the prime example, with sanctions even tougher than those in Georgia and Oklahoma. Arizona plans to suspend the license of any firm that knowingly hires illegal aliens and to revoke it for a second offense. The law is set to take effect in January, although Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) is sure to seek changes to make the law more workable.

Several more states will follow suit, mostly next year when legislatures convene.
Many localities are also cracking down. One Virginia county, for example, is curbing access to public services and giving police more leeway to ferret out illegals.

Some targeted legislation is still possible from Congress.
Most likely: Funds to add border security staff and equipment. Plus an effort to make more foreign temporary farm help available.
More problematic: A hike in H-1B visas for high-tech workers. Support is broad, but backers of a comprehensive bill want to use H-1Bs as a carrot to help win support for the more controversial provisions.

All this leaves some employers in a terrible bind. States can crack down on firms, but they can’t give them what they need: A guest worker program and better tools to check a worker’s legal status. They also can’t fix the legal immigration system, which is a real mess, burdened by cumbersome rules, bureaucratic snafus, and costly delays.
Firms that can will send more jobs abroad. Microsoft, for one, will open a new center in Canada because it can’t get enough H-1B visas.
But the service sector is looking at significant labor shortages.
Hardest hit: Facilities in remote areas, where labor is scarce. The Grand Marais Hotel Co., for example, is running three Minnesota hotels with only 32 of 50 positions filled, though it pays maids $8-$9 per hour. Construction firms are also beginning to run short of skilled laborers.
And there’s no relief in sight. Employers will have to make do until at least 2009, the next real opening for a guest worker program.

Reg Relief
Good news for many small public companies, courtesy of the SEC:
The Securities and Exchange Comm. will loosen reporting rules later this year for companies with less than $75 million in market value. The current ceiling is $25 million. Nearly 1,300 firms will benefit. Eligible businesses enjoy more time to file SEC reports, and the filings don’t need to be as extensive as the ones submitted by larger companies.
The SEC will also reduce the paperwork required to raise capital. Public firms with less than $75 million in market value will be spared from having to fill out a pile of forms when selling stocks or bonds. Filing procedures will be streamlined, as they are now for bigs.
The changes reflect the SEC’s desire to ease the burden on smalls as they begin complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley governance law next year.

Tech
Count on rising costs for software maintenance contracts as manufacturers try to make up for dwindling software sales. Figure on paying about 5% to 7% more for upgrades, patches, and service.
One option is to buy software that’s hosted on the Internet, not on your computer. Firms supplying such software include NetSuite and Salesforce.com. But there are some downsides to online software. It’s often slower than your own software, and it may not be as secure.

A new generation of "active" RFID chips provides more uses than the ubiquitous "passive" radio frequency identification tags, which must be read with a scanner for info about shipments, etc.
Active tags can transmit real-time data over wireless networks. Other practical features include battery life of up to four years. But the tags cost $50 apiece vs. pennies each for passive tags. Makers of active RFIDs include Cisco Systems and Infineon Technologies.