Saturday, August 13, 2005

Employers Fill 2006 High-Tech Visa Quotas

Employers Fill 2006 High-Tech Visa Quotas

Aug 12, 6:56 PM (ET)

WASHINGTON (AP) - Immigration officials said Friday they are no longer accepting applications for H1-B visas for high-tech and specialty workers because they have enough to meet the 2006 quota.
Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, received enough applications by Wednesday to meet the quota, agency said. The cutoff of applications comes a little more than a month earlier than last year.
Federal law provides 65,000 H1-B visas every fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Of those, 6,800 are set aside for workers from Chile and Singapore under terms of U.S. trade agreements with those countries.
The visas are granted to foreigners in specialty professions such as scientists, engineers and computer programmers. H1-B visas are good for up to six years. Under the program, employers must pay foreign workers the prevailing wage for their job fields and show that qualified U.S. workers are not being passed over.
The visas are controversial. High-tech and other employers say too few such visas are available and more are needed, but groups representing labor unions and high-tech workers say Americans are being replaced by foreign workers who work for less money.
Visas are still available for some of the additional 20,000 H1-B visas Congress provided for foreigners with a U.S.-earned master's degree or higher U.S. degree. Foreigners who work at higher education institutions or a nonprofit or government research organization on H1-B visas are not counted in the annual cap. The agency still is accepting applications in those categories.
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On the Net:
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Wednesday, August 10, 2005

2006 Need for High-Tech Workers Nearly Met

2006 Need for High-Tech Workers Nearly Met

Aug 8, 6:36 PM (ET)
By SUZANNE GAMBOA

WASHINGTON (AP) - Employers are closing in on the limit for hiring foreign high-tech workers for jobs next year, roughly two months before the start of the 2006 fiscal year, an immigration official said Monday.
The number of applications for the jobs, many of them in high-tech companies, was nearly 52,000 as of Thursday, with 22,383 applications for H1-B visas approved and 29,556 pending.
"The cap will definitely be hit before Oct. 1, which was when it was hit last year," said Chris Bentley, spokesman for the agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
H1-B visas are granted to foreigners in specialty professions such as computer programming. Under the program, employers must pay foreign workers the prevailing wage for their job fields and show that qualified U.S. workers are not being passed over.
Federal law provides 65,000 H1-B visas every fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Of those, 6,800 are set aside for workers from Chile and Singapore.
Bentley said he could not predict when the cap would be hit because a flood of applications could come in on a single day or be submitted over several days.
Employers, particularly high-tech companies, have long argued that not enough H1-B visas are available.
Congress temporarily raised the number to 195,000 during the high-tech boom. In April, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, in a rare visit to Washington, lobbied the Bush administration to lift the limit on H1-B visas, saying anyone with good computer science training is not unemployed. Unions and other critics say the program allows businesses to fill jobs with cheaper foreign labor.
Meanwhile, employers have used about half of the H1-B visas available this year for foreign workers with advanced degrees in math and science. Congress provided another 20,000 for foreigners with master's degrees or doctorates in those fields, although the visas didn't become available until May. About 8,200 applications for those visas for the 2006 fiscal year have been approved or are pending.