Thursday 4 April 2013

H1B And Immigrants



In what considered as an effort to streamline visa policy US have this time introduced granting H-1B visa through lottery system from this year. If the reports are any indication it would be taken up after consulting companies. If the lottery system takes shape, this would be the first time when thousands of H-1B aspirants will be trying their lack but a computerized draw.

Interestingly even citizenship and immigration services are expected to fill the H-1B cap in the first five days itself. It is also believed that the USCIS can grant 65000 H-1B visas. Along with this, a good of 20000 H-1B visas will be rewarded for pupils carrying their masters or higher degree from US educational institutions

Even though the congress increased the cap to 195000 from between 2001 to 2003 for some reasons it didn’t not reach. The USCIS further believes that it may receive more petitions than the H-1B cap. It further said that in the event that the USCIS receives more petitions than the cap then they may be going in for lottery system to randomly pick the number of petitions that in a way can help them reach the cap.

USCIS also said it plans to reject the petitions that are subject to the cap and don’t fulfill the requirements. Immigrants in America have been a part of the American growth story.  Whether it is Google, Intel, Sun, Yahoo all have one thing in common, they have all been founded by immigrants It may not come as a surprise that more than half of Silicon Valley’s companies have been founded by the immigrants, so that speaks volumes about their spirit of entrepreneurship. H1B visa has been instrumental in encouraging immigrants to play a bigger role in the growth story of America.