Slashdot Mirror
Annual H-1B Visa Cap Met In One Day
CNet is reporting that the door has closed on the H1-B visa application process for this year, one day after it began. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services said that it had received 150,000 applications as of yesterday afternoon. 65,000 H1-B visas can be issued for foreigners with bachelor's degrees. The USCIS will choose randomly from the applications to determine the winners.
Add to this the fact that there's really no effective enforcement going on, this "limit filled in one day" just reeks of political fodder to push for more Visas.
Surprisingly, there are indeed some actual real numbers published on the number of H1-B admissions into the U.S., from the Department of Homeland Security. These numbers appear to confirm that there are a lot more H1-B's entering the country than the Visa limit would suggest.
The DHS document (The 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics) is at: http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/year book/2005/OIS_2005_Yearbook.pdf
I'm quoting the following from a discussion on dice.com at: http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=49 2&tstart=15
"Temporary workers and Trainees:" Specialty Occupations(H-1B):
YEAR - H-1B visas Admitted
1996 - 144,458
1997 - 240,947
1998 - 302,421
1999 - 355,065
2001 - 384,191
2002 - 370,490
2003 - 360,498
2004 - 386,821
There are a number of other excellent quotes on the above thread on Dice. It's well worth reading.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
As an H1B holding Indian working in the US, I can tell you for a fact that the assertion you make (really your lawyer) is completely and utterly false. The cap applies to the entire world. There are other visa types that you can come to the US under, but if its the H1B you are interested in, the cap applies.
If your lawyer doesn't know this or is feeding you misinformation for whatever reason, you should look into taking your business elsewhere.
Scotland - we're possibly the most welcoming country in the world. There's a hell of a lot less racism here than in England (as far as you can tell by the news anyway) and there's a lot of open space for people to enjoy if they're looking for that sort of thing.
Wrong. The US Supreme Court made a decision that anyone's property can be condemned and be made part of a private business at anytime.
L ondon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_
This case shows that a county can take property from one landowner and give/sell to another landowner at will. You live in the property you "own" only at the whim of the county and state.
Unfortunately, you remember wrong. The Economic Policy Institute has a great article on this that should probably be submitted to the main page. You can find the article here: http://www.sharedprosperity.org/bp187.html
To quote the linked article:
The most significant design flaw is the absence of a labor market test. The U.S. Department of Labor recently expressed the practical implications of this fact in a straightforward manner when it stated that "H-1B workers may be hired even when a qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced from the job in favor of the foreign worker." Simply put, an employer does not have to test the labor market before hiring a foreign worker on an H-1B.