IBM says the growth in technologies such as cloud, analytics, mobile and security is “exacerbating the skills shortage” in the tech industry, and underscores the need for temporary foreign tech workers.

The firm made this point in a letter to U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the Judiciary Committee chairman, in response to a query from the senator on IBM’s use of the H-1B visa.

Grassley, in his letter, said that IBM applied for approximately 5,800 petitions for H-1B visas on April 1, which was the first day that firms could apply for visas for 2016. IBM said it expected only a fraction of the visa applications would be approved. Competition is fierce: The U.S. received 233,000 H-1B visa petitions for 85,000 visas and awards them to applicants via a lottery.

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