Temporary-Visa Plan Backed

High-tech firms urged Congress to pass a bill that would increase the number of temporary visas for skilled workers, a measure that is tangled in election-year politics and efforts to woo Hispanic voters. Proposals to increase the number of so-called H-1B visas granted to skilled foreign workers to help meet fast-growing high-tech firms’ demand for labor have broad support among Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate. The 115,000 visas allotted for this year were exhausted in March. But the issue has become bogged down in political fights in both houses. The White House and congressional Democrats are pushing to include in the measure provisions that would grant amnesty to some long-term illegal immigrants and allow them to seek permanent resident status. They also want to include a provision they said would redress unfair treatment of immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti.