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Immigration

124k H-1B immigration visa requests for 85k spots shows reform need

The season to file for high-skilled immigration petitions has come and gone. And just like that, the country's businesses showed their collective hunger for STEM talent from abroad by using all available visas.

The bipartisan group of U.S. Senators leading an immigration reform push.
This is a guest post from Maryland Immigration Attorney Lynn O’Brien on immigration reform impacting entrepreneurship.
Updated 4/16/13 @ 11:55am: An earlier version of this story featured a headline describing the 124,000 H-1B visa requests as STEM petitions, but those applying come from fields outside of STEM as well. It has been edited to refer more accurately to H-1B visas generally.
The season to file for high-skilled immigration petitions has come and gone. And just like that, the country’s businesses showed their collective hunger for STEM talent from abroad by requesting far more than are allowed by law. The gulf between need and want of American business is as good a case as any to show the caps should be increased.

Within the first week that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting H-1B petitions for fiscal year 2014, USCIS received approximately 124,000 of them. Currently, USCIS is no longer accepting H-1B visa petitions for those who have never held H-1B status — with some exceptions. The filing window was five days only, from April 1 through April 5.
Generally, the H-1B visa is the most commonly used visa by U.S. companies seeking to employ foreign nationals in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in such specialized fields as the sciences, engineering or computer programming. The H-1B visa is often the only viable option for a U.S. company to employ a foreign national even if he or she received a U.S. degree and already worked for that company in lawful status as a student with employment authorization.
The number of H-1B visas issued annually to foreign nationals who have not previously held H-1B status is statutorily capped at 65,000 per fiscal year, with an additional 20,000 available to those who have at least a U.S. master’s degree.
As reported on Technically Baltimore, the I-Squared Act introduced earlier this year sought to increase the H-1B visa cap from 65,000 to 115,000 annually with provisions to increase the cap to 300,000 based on market demand. It also proposed unlimited H-1B visa availability for those with U.S. master’s degrees or higher.
With the nation’s focus on comprehensive immigration reform, it seemed Congress wasn’t going to act on I-Squared. In fact, at an event hosted by the Internet Association in early March, Senator Charles Schumer advised technology firms to stop lobbying for a stand-alone bill for high-skilled immigrants, saying, “You will not get a bill unless there’s a full immigration bill.”
As for the 124,000 petitions that USCIS received that first week: two lotteries were conducted to determine whom the lucky winners of H-1B visa status may be for fiscal year 2014.

  • The first lottery included only those petitions where the sponsored foreign national held at least a U.S. masters degree. 
  • Any advanced degree petitions not selected were then included in a second lottery in which all of the remaining H-1B petitions were placed.
  • Any petition not selected via either lottery will be rejected and returned to the filer.

As of April 11, the bipartisan group of senators working on immigration reform had produced a draft bill, noting that visas for high-tech workers was one of the last issues worked out.
The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hold a hearing on comprehensive immigration reform legislation on April 17.  Hopefully then the public will be able to find out which provisions from I-Squared made it into the proposed legislation.
Too bad this all comes too late to alleviate problems for companies this year. For the approximate 39,000 sponsoring employers whose petitions were not selected and for any other companies planning to sponsor an H-1B employee later this year, they must now wait until April 1, 2014, when the filing window for FY 2015 opens.

Companies: U.S. Government
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