Wall Street Journal
By Corinne Abrams
March 17, 2016
The H-1B working visas that allow U.S. companies to employ skilled foreign workers have been the
subject of discussion in the U.S. presidential election. But
despite the debate, it is time again for U.S. companies to get ready to
apply for the coders, engineers and other workers with special skills
that they need to bring over.
The
U.S. will start accepting applications for its H-1B visas for the
coming fiscal year on April 1, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services said Wednesday.
U.S. businesses use the visa program to employ foreign workers in sectors like science, engineering and computer programming.
Some
U.S. politicians say that the visas are used to hire cheap labor,
taking work from American workers. Most economists and executives say
the visas help the U.S. fill a skills gap.
Donald
Trump, the frontrunner in the Republican presidential nominee race,
earlier this month changed his stance on the H-1B permit, and then
changed it back again.
[wsj-more-in tag=”H-1B VISA“]
Mr.
Trump appeared to speak out in favor of the visas, reversing a previous
stance, before later issuing a statement backtracking on his comments.
“The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are
temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit
purpose of substituting for American workers at lower
pay,” he said in the statement.
The
USCIS said the cap for the number of H-1B visas it can issue for the
next fiscal year is 65,000, and said it expects to receive more than
that number of applications in the first five
days of the program. The first 20,000 applications filed for workers
with a U.S. master’s degree or higher are exempt from the cap.
If
the service receives an “excess of petitions” in those first five days,
it will use a lottery system to select the number of applications to
meet the cap.
The service said it would start dealing with H-1B petitions that asked for premium processing May 16.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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