PTI

Washington, May 27: The US Senate has approved a landmark Immigration Reform Bill that proposes to give citizenship to millions of illegal people and double the number of H1B visas.

The move will also greatly benefit thousands of Indian software professionals who work in the US.

The Bill passed on Thursday has proposed to double the H1 B visas from the present 65,000 annually to nearly 1,15,000 and with a 20 per cent increase on an annual basis.

Various software and technology companies like Microsoft and Intel have been pressurising the US government by threatening to move jobs abroad if it does not raise the cap on H1B visas and allow more skilled workers into the country.

In the version that was cleared by the Senate Judiciary Committee was also a new student visa classification for high tech studies.

However, the House version of the Bill has nothing on the H1B visa and according to analysts, it is most likely to be neglected when legislators get down to the negotiations at the conference committee stage.

The main provision of the Bill is to provide citizenship rights to nearly 10-12 million illegal immigrants in the US.

This was an issue on which the House of Representatives refused to comment when it passed the immigration legislation late in 2005.

The US Senate cleared the Bill with a comfortable margin of 62-32 but threw up the deep split between the majority Republican Party and the Conservatives.