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Brown in America

H1B applicants to be selected ….. randomly??

By: Santosh :+: Under: Brown in America, Immigration
On: ⋅ April 14, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

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Remember the great H1b gold rush from last year? The number of applicants exceeded the allocated quota in less than 48 hours after the USCIS started taking applications. [Über Desi story from 2007]

This year is no different. [NYT]
USCIS had the proverbial application window open for 5 days and received nearly twice the number of applications (163,000) compared to open spots (85,000). 65,000 visas go to foreign workers currently outside the nation and 20,000 to first time applicants currently in the US, namely students on F1 visas.

Meanwhile, some politicians backed by technology firms, have renewed efforts to raise the annual limits by using previously unused visas.

From NYT:

The visa announcement brought renewed calls from American technology companies to raise the annual limits. On Thursday, senators led by John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, introduced a bill that would raise the H-1B cap to 145,000 visas each year through 2011. It would also allow businesses to use, over a three-year period, some 150,000 visas that were available in past years but were never issued.

Other politicians, meanwhile, have laid the blame on Indian companies for the H1B visa famine. [Rediff: tip Sai]

From Rediff:

On April 1, when the US Citizenship and Immigration Services began receiving thousands of applicants for the new H-1B visas for fiscal year 2009, Senators Richard Durbin, Illinois Democrat and Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican, sent a questionnaire to the top 25 recipients of approved H-1B visa petitions in 2007.

Two influential US Senators have renewed the campaign against the biggest users of H-1B visa workers in the US, including Indian heavyweights Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and Tata Consultancy Services.

They fired off a missive to these companies asking how they employed professional and skilled workers, majority of whom hail from India.

This kind of witch hunt seems counter intuitive to me. Is it the Indian companies’ fault that they are so successful, they can afford to employ and sponsor visas for all these people?

Here’s the kicker for this year’s applicants, their fate will be decided by a lottery.

Sometime next week, the agency will conduct an electronic lottery to select 85,000 immigrants to receive the H-1B visas, which are valid for three years and can be renewed for another three.

At this stage, I’m unable to find any information on how this “lottery” will be conducted. Are the most qualified applicants going to be selected based on education, experience, etc and then a lottery conducted? Or is it just going to be one massive game of bingo - “applicant number 123456, it’s your lucky day”?

The entire process starting with issuing H1B visas for first time applicants to issuing permanent residency for the same high tech workers is, pardon my French, FUBAR. Color me biased on this one, but it’s truly time for Congress and the USCIS to step back and take a look at how they’re treating highly skilled technology workers.

Other resources:
Listen to industry experts like Vinod Dham and Vivek Wadhwa express their frustrations at the current immigration process and how political rhetoric is hampering the process instead of solving it, in this discussion on SAJA BlogTalkRadio. [SAJA BlogTalkRadio link]

Other Über Desi posts on the H1B visa:
What Lies Beneath - A tale of the H1B visa and broken American Dreams [link] - January 23 2007
The Great H1B Gold Rush [link] - April 4 2007
The H1B Saga: Students affected most [link] - April 10 2007
Anatomy of a H1B fraud [link] - July 10 2007

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