visa

The number of petitions for H-1B temporary workers filed for next year increased overall by about 20 percent this time around, U.S. immigration officials said this week.

On Tuesday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it had closed this year's application window, having received more than enough petitions to meet a congressionally mandated cap of 65,000 visas and fill another 20,000 slots for foreigners holding advanced degrees from U.S. universities. But it didn't immediately reveal the number of petitions it had received.

USCIS said on Thursday that according to a "preliminary" … Read more

Editor's note: This blog was updated at 1:02 p.m. PDT with comments from the high-tech industry.

As predicted by high-tech companies months ago, U.S. immigration officials said Tuesday that they've received more than enough petitions for next year's batch of H-1B temporary worker visas and would be considering no more of them.

A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman said the agency won't say until later this week exactly how many applications it received since the application window opened on April 1. (The agency characterized the number, not surprisingly, as "high&… Read more

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has given high-tech companies a piece of good news: foreign graduates of American universities won't necessarily be forced to go home before companies have a chance to hire them on temporary work visas.

The new rule announced late Friday will allow recent graduates with science, technology, engineering, or mathematics degrees to stay in the country for 29 months, instead of the previous 12 months, if they're participating in an off-campus on-the-job training program related to their field of study.

The "stopgap measure" appears to be directly related to persistent … Read more

The window for U.S. companies to submit their H-1B visa applications for next year opens today and ends on Monday. And Google's not very happy about the details.

Neither are Microsoft and other tech companies. They want the government to increase the number of visas that companies can get to hire foreign workers. More than 150,000 applications are expected to be submitted this year, more than double the annual limit of 65,000.

Most large technology companies point to hundreds of job listings that they can't fill because of the lack of qualified U.S. candidates, … Read more

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--The politically explosive debate over millions of undocumented U.S. workers appears to be smothering high-tech companies' attempts to obtain higher allotments of H-1B temporary visas and green cards, Oracle's head lobbyist suggested Wednesday.

Any "rational" politician understands those longstanding pleas to bring in more skilled foreigners for gaps where no qualified Americans fit, said Robert Hoffman, who also serves as co-chairman of a coalition of high-tech companies called Compete America that lobbies for heightened visa caps. By his estimation, if that issue were severed from the rest of the immigration debate, it would "… Read more

With another avalanche of petitions for H-1B temporary worker visas expected this year, U.S. immigration officials have adopted a new rule designed to address complaints that some companies are gaming the system.

Apparently, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has been receiving duplicate H-1B applications from companies for the same employee. About 500 duplicate applications were received last year, according to an Associated Press report.

The window for next year's H-1B allotments opens April 1. A new rule adopted Wednesday prohibits the practice of filing duplicate applications. Companies caught in violation will see their applications revoked or denied, … Read more

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates clearly got through to some politicians with his plea for more H-1B visas on Capitol Hill earlier this week.

Late Thursday, a U.S. House of Representatives Democrat on the Science and Technology Committee, which Gates addressed, introduced a bill that would double the number of H-1B visas and remove other restrictions from 2008 onward. Then, on Friday, a key House Republican followed with his own proposal for "emergency" relief. His plan: tripling the visa cap.

H-1Bs allow foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in their area of specialty to be employed … Read more

WASHINGTON--For the second year in a row, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates ventured to Capitol Hill and urged Congress to let more foreign-born engineers work in the United States and to direct larger numbers of tax dollars to research and education.

Just as he did around the same time last year before a U.S. Senate committee, Gates on Wednesday contended America's competitiveness in the global economy is "at risk." He said Congress, the administration, and the next president must commit to overhauling immigration policy and encouraging both public and private research investment.

"It makes no sense … Read more

Opponents of increased H-1B temporary worker visas have long argued that raising the annual cap will cause Americans to lose out on jobs to foreigners--or see their wages depressed.

A new study (PDF) released Monday by a free market-leaning nonprofit group tries to argue that's not the case--and that insufficient quantities of visas are actually sending would-be U.S. job openings offshore.

That group, called the National Foundation for American Policy, argues that for each H-1B visa requested by a corporation, its overall hires climbed by, on average, fivefold. In smaller companies, the group estimated seven new employees were … Read more