Iowa Caucuses hear tech voices

You may not be hearing it in news coverage of the Iowa Caucuses, but the tech community is making its voice heard where it can to the presidential hopefuls. Gary Scholten, a senior vice president and CIO at Principal Financial Group in Des Moines, has met with several presidential candidates who are running in Iowa's Jan. 3 caucus.
So far, that list includes New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and Sens. Barack Obama and Christopher Dodd. Those meetings have given Scholten the opportunity to express the concerns and needs of the IT community from science and technology education to immigration policy.

One of his biggest concerns is the low number of H-1B visas. The 85,000 available in 2007 were claimed in just one day. "The smaller companies, the entrepreneurial companies, are going to be hurt first, and that's where a lot of the economic growth comes from," Scholten said. Also in Des Moines is Dante Vignaroli, a mainframe developer for more than 30 years who lost his job to an H-1B worker. Vignaroli was laid off in 1999 and has earned a living doing mostly contract work since then. Vignaroli has talked to Sen. Joseph Biden about H-1B visas, and he has twice discussed the issue with an Obama aide. While tech issues are only a tiny piece of the debate right now, many believe that issues such as global sourcing and the U.S. strategic position on technology may become front and center as the presidential race unfolds.

For more on presidential politics and tech:
- See this Computerworld Article