SAN FRANCISCO — The California Republican Party is coming under criticism for its decision to hire political operatives who are not American citizens for two top jobs.

In March, the state party hired an Australian, Michael Kamburowski, to be its chief operating officer. He now lives in America on a so-called green card, but he was ordered deported in 2001. That order was eventually lifted, though he is now suing the Department of Homeland Security for $41 million over an episode in 2004 where he was jailed for 30 days by immigration authorities, according to court records.

Recently, the party gave the position of research and political technology director to a Canadian, Christopher Matthews. Mr. Matthews is presently in America on a special work visa for Mexican and Canadian nationals, but California GOP officials applied for and received a coveted “H1B” visa for him, a party spokesman said. The H1B program is the subject of intense lobbying by the technology industry, which has urged Congress to increase the annual allotment of 65,000 visas for skilled workers.

Last night, one of the men abruptly resigned. “The California Republican Party Operations Committee held a teleconference tonight with Mike Kamburowski where he offered his resignation, which has been accepted,” the state party chairman, Ronald Nehring, said in a terse statement e-mailed to The New York Sun. “We thank him for his service.”

Reports in the San Francisco Chronicle about the unusual hires prompted puzzled, angry, and obscene reactions from Republicans, along with some ridicule from Democrats.

“Are you kidding me? … Is our COO suing America?” a party vice chairman from Southern California, Jon Fleischman, asked on his blog yesterday.

The flap comes as the Republican Party is riven by a fractious debate over immigration legislation championed by President Bush.

The international hiring has also led to the mocking of California Republicans on national television. “The Republican Party here in California has obtained a special visa to hire a Canadian to be the state deputy political director, because they say they can’t find a qualified American to do the job,” Jay Leno joked on NBC’s “Tonight Show” last week. “Apparently, working for Republicans is one of those icky jobs Americans just don’t want to do.”

A former spokeswoman for the California GOP, Karen Hanretty, called the hiring decisions unfathomable. “It’s insulting but also embarrassing … to bring people from the outside who don’t know the difference between Lodi and Lancaster … and who can’t even vote,” she told the Chronicle.

“The Republican grass roots are up in arms about it,” a strategist for the California Democratic Party, Robert Mulholland, said. “At the very time they’re arguing at the national level against Bush’s immigration proposal, they’ve got their own story about bringing in foreigners.”

Mr. Kamburowski worked in the 1990s on projects for an anti-tax group, American for Tax Reform, which is run by a prominent conservative activist, Grover Norquist. Mr. Nehring also has close ties to Mr. Norquist. Mr. Kamburowski’s last job was working for a real estate broker in the Dominican Republic, the Chronicle reported.

Mr. Nehring initially defended the hires as part of an open-door approach by the party.

Mr. Matthews was chosen because of his political work in Canada, Britain, and San Diego County, a party spokesman, Hector Barajas, said. While it is believed that employers looking to hire under the H1B visa program must show that no qualified American is willing to take the job, one critic of the program called that “an urban legend.”

“There is no requirement to demonstrate that there’s not qualified Americans” in many cases, a computer programmer from Sacramento, Kim Berry, said. He said firms that get 15% of their work force from H1B visa holders are supposed to show that they advertised the jobs, but most do not have to file any proof of a labor shortage.

“I don’t think this should be happening,” Mr. Berry said. He said he has no objection to admitting people with exceptional or unusual skills, but that many people being admitted under the H1B program were doing “very mundane” work.

In an e-mail to Republican leaders a few days ago, Mr. Kamburowski said the flap was unwarranted. “When we promote individuals who have displayed great skills but who just happen to hail from another country, we are pegged as hypocrites,” he complained. “No one ever raised eyebrows when James Carville and other Democrat operatives traveled to Israel, the U.K., and elsewhere to lend their political skills to foreign political campaigns.”