H1B VISA CAP REACHED, SAYS US AGENCY
Lottery to be held to allot visa popular among Indian professionals
WASHINGTON : For the sixth year running, the US has announced early closure of the period for companies to file petitions to hire foreign workers for speciality positions under H-1B visas, used in large numbers by Indian firms and technology professionals.
US Citizenship and Immigrations Services (USCIS), which runs the programme, said in a statement on Friday that it had “reached the Congressionally mandated 65,000 H-1B visa cap for fiscal year 2019 … (and) also received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to meet the 20,000 visa US advanced degree exemption, known as the master’s cap”.
There is a cap of 85,000 on the number of H-1B visas that can be issued each. But USCIS received several times more petitions in the past years, forcing it to close the process early, mostly on the fifth day after opening the petition process. It started past Monday for 2019; the process starts a year before its beneficiaries join their employers.
This year’s H-1B process is being closely watched as petitions are likely to face intense scrutiny in view of changes introduced by the Trump administration to prevent the programme from being used to displace American workers.
Questions are being raised if filings may drop as a result, as they did in 2017, the first year of President Donald Trump in office. Indian companies have cut back on their applications and are ramping up their hirings locally in the US.
An early cap has been reached every year since 2013, in five days in every instance.
The agency will use a computer-generated lottery to pick the approved petitions as in past years, USCIS said, adding that a date for it will be announced shortly.