RSSH-1B Visa Limits Hit After Only 1 Day
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published April 4, 2007, 11:40 AM
On the day after it began receiving applications for H-1B work visas, the US Citizenship and Immigration Service reported yesterday it had already received more than double the number of applications it is permitted by law to grant for 2008. The same limit took two months to reach last year.
While H-1B grants are officially capped at 65,000, USCIS reported receiving over 150,000 applications as of Monday afternoon.
H-1B visa applications are filed by US companies on behalf of the foreign-born individuals they seek to hire. Sponsored individuals need not be applicants for immigrant status - in other words, they need not be seeking US citizenship.
After 65,000 applications have been processed, USCIS then makes exemptions for 20,000 more applications for individuals with master's or equivalent degrees.
But US law has already determined that it wouldn't be fair to applicants whose petitions were received on the day the cap was reached, to simply stop grabbing envelopes out of the hopper. So USCIS will hold a lottery for all H-1B petitions received Monday and Tuesday, allowing a computer to randomly select from those petitions until the cap is met.
But because USCIS received so many petitions, it stated -- maybe more than the 150,000 it has thus far counted -- it won't be able to hold the lottery perhaps for another several weeks.
Typically, USCIS grants extra exemptions to some applicants based (presumably) on merit. But this is the first time the agency of the US Dept. of Homeland Security has had to begin making those considerations this early. In 2005, the petition cap had been met in record time in mid-August; and in 2006, reportedly in late May.
Press sources in India believe that a major chunk of the FY 2008 petitions were filed on behalf of Indian student workers. Newspapers and blogs there today are criticizing US immigration policy. For instance, this editorial from the publisher of Desicritics.org takes the US to task for not having realized that, in the wake of the new communications revolution, all industry is global, and thus the notion that foreign scholars whose H-1B terms were fulfilled will simply export American knowledge to European and other competitive countries, is absurd.
Last month, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates testified before Congress that he believed as long as the US continues to deny foreign-born students access to American education, the country will "find it infinitely more difficult to maintain its technological leadership if it shuts out the very people who are most able to help us compete."
Meanwhile, opponents of the H1-B program argue that it encourages American companies such as Microsoft to not only outsource what USCIS calls "specialized services" to foreign countries, but to in effect raise and manage the outsourcing farm in-house, before harvesting its benefits offshore at lower wages.
Opponents contend the cost savings US companies is, in effect, paid for out of the pockets of displaced American workers.
USCIS says it has yet to examine the surplus of H-1B visa applications to determine which ones fall within the 20,000 "master's" automatic exemption. The agency may need a few days before it makes a further announcement.
Yes folks, its 'have your cake and eat it too' time for US tech firms. After all, what Americans want is an underpowered, overpriced Dell POS-6000XL, not more domestic tech jobs. Our focus group said so!
Score: 0
|Again. what does this ahve to do with technology of software?
Score: 0
|9 out of 10 of those visas ahve likely been snapped up by those in the field of technology of software.
Score: 0
|Shows we need to grant many more visas-- not a drop in the bucket for a country of 300 million plus...AND grant working SSN numbers to all illegals here-- for a fee of course. The extra tax dollars & fees generated would be huge, to say nothing of the added economic benefits of getting all that hidden mattress & send-back-home money in circulation. Here's but two examples of how that could help the rest of us now:
1. Banks/finance co's/insurers, etc. would compete with lower rates in order to grab a piece of the pie for that huge new segment-- resulting in lower rates/prices for the rest of us.
2. Help reverse the housing slump.
When most are fully documented(meaning: not in danger of getting deported and/or having something they bought subsequently taken away for lack of documentation)...we will see a reverse phenomenon: instead of their hard-earned under the table earnings flowing out of the country, those earnings stay here + magically funds from their countries flow here to be added to those earnings to be used to purchase property, establish businesses, etc.
Score: 0
|There is absolutely no evidence to support the conjecture in your last paragraph. In fact, most studies show the opposite.
The H1-B program is simply a way for companies to get dirt cheap labor, in much the same way as Circuit City recently did. Proponents of H1-B are just much better at lying about their intentions and lobbying for permission to screw people out of their jobs.
Score: 0
|You're absolutely correct about what that Visa program really is...as i'm right about the damage the underground / no tax economy is causing us:
Chinese pay as much as 50K to get smuggled here, then send what little they make off the books back home-- not even our banks benefit by holding their money temporarily afore they send it, issuing them credit, etc....while the sly restaurant owner has two sets of books to pay the least payroll & other type taxes possible...in turn his suppliers do the same... continue this chain ad nauseam: landlord of the employee, etc.
Score: 0
|Don't worry, the Bank of America will give them all credit cards at loan-shark rates, which they can never pay back and the money will stay here.
Score: 0
|It's a good thing they ran out -- now the American people can see just how perverted this program has become. Will anybody reasonably believe that there is such huge demand for tech workers that 150K people needed visas.
Everyone knows that the tech job market is in the dumper. So what this really indicates is that the bodyshoppers are demanding these positions so they can sell cheap services in this country.
This program needs to eliminated. Visas should be handed out to the highest paying applicants, in reverse order of salary. Only then will this truly be a program for highly skilled workers.
Score: 0
|this is total BULLSH*T!! we don't need anymore f**king Indians or Asians in this country. There are plenty of Aryan men and women that were born in America than can do the g**d*** jobs that these f**king companies want to give to turd worlders. This melting pot is now being turned into a huge cauldron of sh*t.
Score: -1
|Well...as a group: die-hard Aryans tend to be inferior(to the other two groups cited in your example) in the areas of intellect, study habits, hard-work, non-substance abuse, decorum(manners), morality, you name it....
...ideal employee candidates, no?
Score: 0
|Nice, racists here... Your not related to Adolf Hitler are you?
Score: 0
|Funny thing is-- A LOT of Aryans carry African, Native American and/or Asian blood...their maternal ancestors just couldn't resist dalliances with their more handsome and/or better-endowed servants.
This is getting borne out over and over again every single day in the DNA project.
Score: 0
|They probably all went to Venezuelan, Cuban, and Iranian spies -- or some form of conspiracy. As well all know, the US Government does NOT read their mail every day; heck, 100K of the 150K received are probably solicitations from Publisher's Clearing House (maybe you've already won) and Victoria Secret catalogs (VS sends them weekly, it seems)...
Score: 0
|I wish the USCIS could process the visa number for the EB3 faster.
Score: 0
|This doesn't seem to have much to do with technology news....
Score: 0
|it does not ....
***coughirrelevantcough ***
Score: 0
|I wonder how many of these went to technology companies...
Score: 0
|Most.
Score: 0
|