Posted on 04/04/2013 11:35:14 PM PDT by Jyotishi
Washington - The US received nearly 50,000 packages of H-1B visa applications on the very first day, a media report has said, which is reflective of the sudden surge in demand of the country's most sought after work-visas for the IT professionals.
The USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), officially, has not come out on the number of H-1B applications received by it since April 1 when it started accepting petitions for it for the fiscal 2014 beginning October 1, 2013.
According to an estimate provided by FCi Federal, Virginia-based government services and technology provider, which is supplying personnel to assist the USCIS in processing the H-1B petitions, on the first day it received some 50,000 packages, the Computer World reported. A package can contain one H-1B application to multiple applications, but based on the past experience, a package on an average contains 1.2 H-1B petitions, the media outlet reported.
The number of packages received fell sharply on the second day, Computer World said. According to Congressional approved mandate, USCIS can reward a maximum of 65,000 H-1B visas for the fiscal year 2014 beginning October 1, 2013.
In addition to the USCIS can also reward 20,000 H-1B visas for those having masters or higher degree from US academic institutions. This limit on H-1B visas has been in place for more than two decades now.
The USCIS received H-1B petitions at its two centres – the Vermont Service Center and the California Service Center - where its officials described business as usual. Last month, USCIS had said based on feedback from a number of stakeholders, it anticipates that it may receive more petitions than the H-1B cap between April 1, 2013 and April 5, 2013.
As such if USCIS receives more petitions than it can accept, it will use a lottery system to randomly select the number of petitions required to reach the numerical limit, the federal agency said. The lottery for the H-1B cap was last used in April 2008, when the cap was filled on the first day itself.
Last year in 2012, it took 73 days for the USCIS to fill in the cap, while in took 235 days to receive applications to fill the 65,000 H-1B numbers in 2011; 300 days in 2010, and 264 days in 2009. In 2008 and 2007 the caps were reached in the first few days.
Within that same stack is guaranteed to be at least one fraudulently submitted application, if not much more than that, courtesy of ineffective enforcement(which will never come as long as the program exists). Good luck with trying to prosecute it if it does get found.
The only thing this program does is blunt the effects of supply and demand. This is done by adding a surplus of labor to diminish upward movement in a shortage situation.
In short, this program provides incentives to make a surplus look like a shortage.
“This is done by adding a surplus of labor to diminish upward movement in a shortage situation.”
And Bill Gates wonders why American kids don’t go into computers anymore. As long as government & business collaborate to suppress wages/standards of living, don’t be surprised when Americans vote socialist. Not a logical response, since the Dems support the importation of cheap labor as well (while somehow keeping union support), but as long as Repubs are painted as the party of big business they are easy to stick with this catastrophic destruction of our way of life.
Yep, Democrats said go to College and you would be able to join the middle-class, diminishing upward movement ensures less competition for the elites.
temporary and monitored visas OK.
But, ALL immigration must be halted until the unemployment rate gets down to 5%, IMO.
Somehow the “captains of industry” hate the laws of supply and demand when it comes to skilled labor. I am in the IT industry and have been fighting this my whole life. The H-1b program will end when we start importing cheap lawyers that will work for 15 bucks an hour, that is when it will end.
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