Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Sidebar: H-1B Visas Nearly Gone

October 4, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- The cap on H-1B visas granted to foreign workers, set at 65,000 for the 2005 fiscal year that began Oct. 1, is expected to be reached within weeks.
Applications can be filed six months before the fiscal year begins, and by August, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency had received 45,900 H-1B petitions. Based on that pace, immigration experts expect the cap to be reached at its earliest point ever in the fiscal year.
The fiscal 2004 cap, also set at 65,000, was reached in about five months.
There has been a push in both houses of Congress to increase exemption limits for foreign-born individuals who have earned Ph.D.s or master's degrees from U.S. universities. But action before the scheduled Oct. 8 congressional adjournment is seen as unlikely.
Vic Goel, an immigration attorney in Greenbelt, Md., said a quick closing of the cap would leave employers unable to hire highly educated foreign professionals for nearly a year. "If we are making that [educational] investment, we need to reap the return of that investment," Goel said.
But Russ Harrison, legislative representative for the IEEE-USA, said the visa program "creates a strong incentive to push down wages and discourages employment of American workers."



Jump to comments

Legislation/Regulation

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER
Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.
WHITE PAPER
Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.
WHITE PAPER
Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.