Wall Street Journal
By Miriam Jordan
April 7, 2016
The
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Thursday said the number
of petitions for H-1B visas that it received exceeded the 85,000
available since the process opened April 1.
U.S.
demand for foreign skilled-worker visas often used by technology
companies surpassed the entire year’s mandated supply within five days,
prompting the government to announce it will
award them through a lottery.
U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that handles
applications for the visas, known as H-1Bs, said Thursday the number of
petitions it received topped the 85,000 available
since the process opened April 1.
It
is the fourth consecutive year requests outstripped supply in less than
a week, triggering a lottery. Businesses clamor for the H-1Bs, which
are intended to fill jobs for which there aren’t
qualified Americans. The majority go to workers in the tech sector but
they also are used for professionals in advertising, architecture and
other fields.
Demand
had been widely expected to quickly exceed the allotment, which is set
by Congress. The government said it hasn’t yet set a date for the
lottery, a computer-generated random selection
process, and didn’t disclose the total number of applications it
received.
“Reaching
the H-1B cap within the first five days evidences that the U.S. economy
is thirsting for the talent and skill of foreign nationals who
contribute to our growth and job creation,”
said Roxanne Levine, a partner in a New York law firm that represents
companies seeking the visas.
High-tech companies in particular have lobbied for the visa program’s expansion.
Critics
say qualified U.S. workers are being displaced by cheaper foreign hires
through the program. They highlight that many H-1Bs are issued to
global outsourcing companies, particularly
from India, that send workers to the U.S. to acquire skills and then
move them back overseas, a practice that essentially promotes
outsourcing of American jobs.
“There’s
a lot of evidence now that the program is used for cheap labor in the
tech industry,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and
policy research at the Economic Policy Institute,
a think tank. “The fact that reforms have not been agreed upon in
Congress, despite all the attention, shows just how important the H-1B
program is to the business community.”
Companies
apply for an H-1B with a specific job candidate in mind, and it usually
involves immigration attorneys and costs several thousand dollars per
petition. The visas are initially approved
for three years and can be extended for another three. Such visa
extensions don’t count toward the cap.
Demand for the visas, which plunged during the recession, began to rise again in 2011.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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