April 6, 2013
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on April 5 that it had received sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap for fiscal year 2014.
April 6, 2013
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on April 5 that it had received sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap for fiscal year 2014.
BANGALORE: As expected, the H-1B visa cap of 65,000 was breached within five days of the beginning of submission of applications for these visas. That is not good news for Indian IT outsourcing companies – who use this US work visa extensively to send Indian employees to service their American clients – because the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will now use a lottery to determine who gets how many visas.
What's worse for these companies is that the USCIS has received more than 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of persons exempt from the cap under the advanced degree exemption. This is a separate pool of 20,000 visas that are available only to those foreign nationals who have earned a Master's or higher graduate degree from a US institution of higher education.
The agency said it would conduct the selection process for the advanced degree exemption petitions first. All advanced degree petitions not selected will be part of the random selection process for the 65,000 limit. This means the chances of Indian IT companies getting their expected number of visas would be even lower.
It is the first time since 2008 that the cap for H-1Bs was reached so quickly. The USCIS announced on April 5 that it had received sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap for fiscal year 2014. It could not specify the number of applications it had actually received because it was still in the process of accepting applications on Friday.
"USCIS will use a computer-generated random selection process (commonly known as the 'lottery') for all FY 2014 cap-subject petitions received through April 5, 2013 … Due to the high number of petitions received, USCIS is not yet able to announce the exact day of the random selection process," the USCIS said. However, it said it would provide more detailed information about the H-1B cap next week.
The last time a lottery was used was in 2008, when the cap was reached on the very first day of application submission. However, in the subsequent recessionary years, the cap was reached over several months. Last year, it was reached on June 11.
The improvement in the American economy and uncertainties around obtaining L1 visas – the other visa that companies use to send people to the US on work – have generated a rush for H-1B visas this year. If Indian IT companies are unable to get the number of visas they hope for, they may be compelled to employ locals and that could mean higher costs.
Courtesy: TOI
