Requests likely to exceed supply of high-skilled visas
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security expects applications for highskilled immigration visas to outpace the available supply in a matter of days.
It’s one of the fastest runs on the much-sought-after work permits in years and a sign of new hiring by U.S. technology companies.
The urgent race for such visas — highly desired by Microsoft, Apple, Google and other leading technology companies — coincides with congressional plans to increase the number available to tech-savvy foreigners.
The race to secure one of the 85,000 so-called H-1B visas available for the 2014 budget year started Monday, and requests will be accepted through at least Friday. If petitions outpace the availability in the first week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — for the first time since 2008 — will use a lottery to pick which companies get visas to award to prospective employees.
“It will be a frenzy, because the cap is nowhere near high enough to meet demand,” said Robert Holleyman, president and CEO of the Software Alliance, a trade group for technology companies.
Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Christopher Bentley said the agency won’t know for certain whether a lottery is necessary until next week.
Each year, 65,000 visas are awarded to companies looking to hire high-skilled workers from around the world; 20,000 more visas are available specifi- cally for foreign workers who have earned a master’s or another advanced degree from a U.S. university.
Even if applications don’t exceed availability this week, immigration attorneys and other experts predicted they would be snatched up faster than in recent years. It took 10 weeks to hit the cap in the 2013 budget year that began last October and more than 33 weeks to dole out all the available visas the year before.
A growing economy is contributing to the rush this year, but the scramble is also a sign that demand for the visas exceeds the available supply. Proposals to increase the number of available visas have been supported by lawmakers and political candidates in recent years and are now considered a key part of immigration reform plans in Congress.