As I have discussed in my previous postings, H1B is a nonimmigrant visa used by foreign professionals to enter the United States and to work for US employers. This visa is available to foreign professionals (e.g., accountants, architects, college professors, computer programmers, etc.) hired by US employers to fill “specialty occupations” on a temporary basis.
The current annual cap on the H1B visa category is 65,000. However, not all H1B nonimmigrants are subject to this annual cap. Those not covered by the cap are H1B nonimmigrants who are employed, or who will be employed, by institutions of higher education or a related or affiliated nonprofit entity. Also not covered are those employed, or who will be employed by a nonprofit research organization or a governmental research organization.
In addition, under the provisions of the H1B Visa Reform Act of 2004, foreign professionals with master’s or higher level degree from a U.S. academic institution are allocated 20,000 new H1B visas.
On its recent H1B update, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said that, as of July 3, 2009, approximately 45,000 H1B cap-subject petitions had been filed. In other words, there remains some 20,000 H1B visas — months after the USCIS started to accept H1B petitions on April 1, 2009.
As some might notice, this situation is a sharp contrast to what happened in the previous years — as in 2008 for instance — when H1B visas were scooped up within a week from the start of the filing period.
This situation only shows how the US economy has gone to pot. Recession has reared its ugly head: many businesses have closed shops and workers have been laid off from work. Consequently, some US employers have no need for foreign workers. And this obviously explains the low usage for H1B visas this year.
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