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H-1B Visa Lottery Will Now Favor Masters, Doctorate Degree Holders (sfchronicle.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the tougher-restrictions dept.

McGruber shares a report from The San Francisco Chronicle: The Department of Homeland Security announced a rule change Wednesday that will transform the lottery that decides who gets the 85,000 H-1B visas granted to for-profit companies every year. Previously, an initial lottery granted 20,000 visas only to those holding advanced degrees granted by U.S. institutions -- master's degrees or doctorates -- and then a general lottery granted 65,000 visas to all qualified applicants. The Department of Homeland Security switched the order of these lotteries, it said in a notice of the final rule change, which will bolster the odds for highly educated foreign nationals. The change reduces the likelihood that people with just a bachelor's degree will win in the general lottery, said Lisa Spiegel, an attorney at Duane Morris in San Francisco and head of the firm's immigration group. The program shift could hurt technology staffing companies, also known as outsourcers, who have a reputation for flooding the lottery with applications. Three Indian firms -- Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro -- often account for a majority of the H-1B applications, an analysis of government data shows.

4 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The description above clearly states "those holding advanced degrees granted by U.S. institutions", so not advanced degrees from overseas countries.

  2. Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing by sg_oneill · · Score: 5, Informative

    its well-known that many cultures encourage rote memorization and that passes for 'learning'.

    1) A PhD or Masters is not a course. Its a research program. There are "Masters by Courseworks", which is slightly different, but generally when someone is doing a Masters or PhD its because they are researchers. And unless someones got a sneaky phoneline to God, theres nothing to "rote" memorize.

    2) I hate to break it to you, but US Universities are not generally the highest categories. There are some, but the stats aren't great. 1.7% of US universities fit in the "Top 100", versus UK with 2.5% and Australia with 3.1% I should observe US figures are highly tainted by the proliferation of bogus universities (Liberty University, and other dodgy thinktank feeders). Sure you have things like Caltech or Stanford , but for every Caltech, you've got a hundred busted ass rural universities or "Praeger mail order university where you get a doctorate for declaring the world is flat" type places.

    Don't be so arogant, and consider traveling.

    --
    Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  3. Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing by Shaitan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because they are importing 85,000 people a year to dillute and reduce salaries in the US. It's all about avoiding paying fair wages.

  4. Re:masters, even doctorate, means nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    America, by itself doesn't want them, as we have more than enough people, and we have colleges and skills churning out CS majors by the legions.

    H-1Bs are wanted by business because of pure money and power. A developer will wind up with a $40k salary, who normally gets 80-100k, and there is also the control aspect. If a H-1B gets fired, they get deported, so they wind up working 100+ hour weeks and putting up with malfeasance that no US citizen/resident would tolerate.

    The H-1B program is basically a violation of national sovereignty for business profits.