Now that comprehensive immigration reform has likely died for the rest of this congressional session—through December 2008—we’re seeing various components of an overhaul finding their way into other legislation.

The preferred vehicle is appropriations bills. For instance, amendments that would require all federal contractors to use the government-run E-Verify electronic verification system, formerly known as Basic Pilot, have been attached to House bills to fund the Agriculture, Commerce, Labor and Transportation departments. Such a rider has been attached to both the House and Senate versions of the homeland security funding bill.

This week, a defense authorization bill in the Senate is likely to become the vehicle for legislation that would enable children of illegal immigrants to gain citizenship if they attend college or join the military. An agriculture worker bill also may come up soon.

While this activity is under way, another facet of immigration reform has yet to find traction. Technology companies are pushing to raise limits on H-1B visas and green cards for highly skilled workers. A bill may soon or emerge—or one that’s percolating may come to a boil and get attached to another piece of legislation.

Proponents are trying to encourage such action by allying with governors. Last week, Compete America, a coalition of technology companies and organizations, circulated a letter from 13 state CEOs calling for an increase in visa limits.

“We and our nation face a critical shortage of highly skilled professionals in math and science to fill current needs,” the governors wrote. “Until we are able to address this workforce shortage, we must recognize that foreign talent has a role to play in our ability to keep companies located in our state and country. [W]e urge congressional action this year that recognizes states’ immediate need to recruit and retain professionals in key sectors, while we continue to produce here at home the skilled workforce our companies need in the long-term.”

That’s certainly the case that businesses will make in a Capitol Hill press conference on September 18. A group called Immigration Voice will “highlight the importance of solving the current challenges due to employment-based green card backlogs faced by the U.S. employers and the highly skilled labor workforce,” states the media advisory.

I won’t be able to attend that event, because I’ll be at a Department of Commerce event where CEOs will likely make the same point during a panel on workforce challenges.

I hope I’ll get a chance to ask whether companies really face a job market that offers too few U.S. job applicants for high-tech positions. That may be true. But as an alum of Purdue University, I find it hard to believe sometimes.

Institutions like Purdue are churning out thousands of high-tech graduates every year. Granted, many of them are foreign students. And it seems silly to ship them back to their home countries instead of keeping them here.

So perhaps the problem is actually that companies can find enough American high-tech job applicants—but not ones who are as skilled as their foreign classmates.

Now, there’s a politically untenable argument. And I understand why most CEOs aren’t going to say that on the record, even if they think it.

A Google HR executive, however, came close, following a House subcommittee hearing in June on immigration reform. 

Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president of people operations, highlighted the contributions made to the company by immigrants holding H-1B visas.  He made a strong case that they are smart, hardworking and are helping keep Google on the cutting edge.

In an interview after his testimony, however, Bock said that the problem Google is facing is not a depleted U.S. high-tech labor pool.

“We want to hire the best people, regardless of where they happen to be from,” he said. “They innovate. They create.”

And while those workers are pursuing the American Dream, they’re helping America win in the global economy in a way that perhaps U.S. students cannot at the moment—either because they’re less interested in technology and science or have less aptitude for it.

If that’s the case, it would be refreshing for corporate executives to say so forthrightly. Bock didn’t quite do that, but he at least answered the question with some nuance, instead of making boilerplate assertions about the lack of high-tech applicants in the U.S. labor market.

We’ll see what the executives at the September 18 event have to say—if I can get my question in.