H1-B visa cap up again?

According to this report on Bloomberg, Microsoft, Oracle and Intel is pressurising the US government to raise the H1-B visa cap to 115000, almost double to the existing cap (current cap is 65000). Microsoft says that otherwise it may be forced to move more jobs abroad as it finds difficulty in attracting and retaining talent. As per Jack Krumholtz (Managing director for Federal Affairs for Microsoft, Microsoft has a couple of thousands positions for which it cannot find the right people and if the situation persists, Microsoft may be forced to do more of their development abroad.

Bill Gates, Cheif Software Architect of Microsoft recently said while in Washington DC that by limiting the number of technical professional work can come into US for work, US would pose a serious threat to US competitiveness with more and more number of competitive technical education institution of higher caliber appearing in India and China.

Not long ago I read an article on the same lines which essentially compared the US steel and automobile industry in wake of increased inflow of IT professionals. Industry experts and analysts felt that by protecting the industry from outside competition, the government is infact making it prone to failure similar to the steel industry in US. Whereas foreign competition in the automobile market made it stronger and stronger and brought it to a place where it is now.

With the third world countries like India rising up meteorically to a dominant position in technology industry, it might serve well for US to lift the cap on the number of H1 visas.