USCIS Completes the H-1B Cap Random Selection Process for FY 2016 (opens in new tab)

I don't think it would impact recent graduates as much as you think. The H1-B program is mainly criticized because of these consultancies importing cheap workers to the U.S. and applying for 10,000's of visa every year. I don't know anyone that complains about immigrants that are employed by top companies such as Google, Palantir, etc... These companies pay top salaries even to new employees without experience. I am sure they would be granted most of the visas they would request if salary was a criteria.

I think this hits a snag (as do many income-based schemes) when you consider the effect of region. This results in lots of H1-Bs going to San Francisco, and almost none to Atlanta, because salaries for the same position are twice as high in San Francisco.

Good point, I have given that some thought too. Besides the problems already cited in the other comments, another problem is that smaller companies trying to grow might have a competitive disadvantage because of the upward pressure on the salaries.

This seems open for abuse by stating an extremely high wage in the application, and then "adjusting" it once the candidate gets his visa.

You're not completely powerless compared to others: you can marry your girlfriend ;)

H1B System is definetely unfair to international undergrads.

Like Synroc I came here for my undergraduate studies and work for a company in SF. I have no intention of leaving unless i am forced to do so.

I spent 5 (4 years of school + 1 year OPT) amazing years in this country and made many american friends, dated american girls lived in two of the most vibrant american cities (SF and NYC) and really adjusted to the American life style. It really hurts to be forced out after experiencing all these great memories. I deserve to stay here..

And now I am sitting in front of my computer refreshing by browser every 30 seconds waiting for an email from my companies legal department.

ps. Synroc take your girlfriend with you and let's move to London or something..

Get married maybe

1. You can apply for permanent residency under the extraordinary individual or highly qualified individual (if you have a specialty profession e.g. STEM)

2. Academic and non-profit jobs don't have a cap. You could take such a position and then apply for permanent residency.

3. You can apply for the green card lottery (I'm assuming you are born in France).

The goal of marriage really shouldn't be getting a visa... I'm saddened that we have to entertain this solution. It feels almost like exchange my body for some materialistic goal when I think about it (of course I'm not OP).

Multiple petitions with multiple legitimate sponsors is not actually disallowed. That being said, there are few situations where a legitimate sponsor would be on-board with an applicant simultaneously filing another petition. I'm not sure if an applicant is legally (as opposed to morally) required to disclose this to sponsors. It is certainly abused all the time.

>So, let's say Google wants to move you to US and wants to pay you $200.000+ because you're a unique scientist that filling a position that can't be filled by a US citizen. After spending time and money for the interview process, they apply for H-1B on behalf of you.

A "unique scientist" should probably be applying for an O-1A [0] rather than an H-1B.

[0] http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers...

The H1B is a bit of a hack for that situation. Let's leave aside qualifying for EB-1 or O-1 as my sibling commentors suggest. At a slightly lower level, what we'd really want to do to fix the problem you identify is to unclog the EB-3 backlog and especially the country specific EB-2 backlogs.

Employment based categories are only allocated 140,000 permanent visas a year (some of which are taken for NACARA catch-up).

http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy...

For Nobel Prize winners and champion soccer players there's O-class visa. H1-B is for the plebs.

Why would they even bother with these temporary visas? Just go for EB-1 if you are such a scientist. http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/permanent-workers...

You can work for Google in a location outside the US for a year then file for L1 visa. However, recent experience shows that 1 year might not be enough.

Someone in the Google league is large enough to hire an individual in one of their non-US offices, and then apply for L-1 visa for intra-company transfers.

If we can extrapolate from the numbers at [1] (not sure how representative it is) then about 29% of the 233,000 total petitions would be filed under the Master's cap. That'd be around 67,337 Master's cap petitions.

[1] http://redbus2us.com/trackers/h1b-visa-tracker/

It guess this mostly matters for people who meant to apply through the Master's cap (graduates of US colleges with Master's degrees). Since there were more than 20k (as USCIS stated), the rest are reduced to regular applicants.

But it's not like they're "taking your spot" in the lottery; if there was no preferential treatment for Master's, they'd still apply as regular applicants.

I'm curious too. Also it wasn't clear what the number was last year.

My guess is that so called 'Indian consultancies' are filing 2-3 times more H1B applications than they would reasonably need in order to receive as much actual visas as they can.

> let's be real, this country doesn't have nearly enough STEM professionals to meet demand

... at current salaries.

You don't have to go through the lottery again if you have already gone through the cap selection process once

From the way I understand it cases with premium processing should here back until May 11. From what I've heard, others "before October" (one company doing consulting for H-1Bs expects these until August 15).

My company's lawyer says that premium processing applicants receive their confirmation e-mail in the next few weeks IF they were selected. Regular processing should be notified by post late May/early June.

edit: typo

It can take months. Got my approval in August.

Rather it is companies gaming the system to get below market labor, and it has a huge negative impact on the entire market.

Almost 50% of all L1 petitions get RFE (Request for evidence). It's becoming harder to use this visa to bring people to the US these days, too. It's especially difficult for big outsourcing companies (proving and supplying enough evidence for the "specialized knowledge" (L1B) category is really non trivial for the companies and often not clearly understood by the USCIS officers, hence the RFE).

However, USCIS has recently released a new L1B adjudications policy for public feedback (http://www.uscis.gov/news/uscis-posts-updated-l-1b-adjudicat...) where they clearly define the "specialized knowledge" category. Maybe this will help companies to properly understand what's needed to demonstrate the specialized knowledge in the future, but I really doubt it.

L-1 visa holders can't change job.

In the good old days, it wasn't so easy to hire a foreigner that studied computer science in an American university: They'd get an automatic 1 year practical training visa, and if after a few months you saw that they were a good hire, you'd sponsor them for an H1-B, and eventually a green card. That's how many senior people that were born overseas got to their spots.

Now, thanks to low quotas, and some rather unsavory consultancy companies, the H1-B program has now become useless for this purpose, as you have less than a 50/50 chance of getting an H1-B approved, just due to quotas. So while an honest company that wants to hire a good developer will not be OK with the delays and the low percentages of hiring someone in those conditions, a mill that interviews thousands of people and will place them in third party customers as consultants will gladly just keep flooding the market with applicants that probably will not get anywhere.

TL;DR The H1-B program used to be defensible, and maybe useful. The way it works now, it only works for companies who abuse it.

H1-B visas are used by US businesses wanting to hire non-american employees. There is an annual cap set on the number of visas (65,000 for people with bachelor's degrees, and an additional 20,000 for those with master's/phd).

This year there was an even more massive oversubscription, and the visas were allotted by lottery. Certain subcategories of visa are not subject to the cap (eg. those requested by non-profit research institutions and universities, including government labs.)

They received 233,000 applications for 85,000 work visas, and have randomly selected 85,000 of them. Everyone else can try next year.

There are more people asking for a spot than spots available. There are 65,000 spots available. If that sounds like a random and arbitrary number, you're right, that's exactly what it is.

If I understand one part correctly, they opened the lottery on April 1st and filled up the entire year's allotment 6 days later.

Every year, this branch of the U.S. government gives out so many of these work visas to qualified applicants. This is one of the most common ways many foreign developers are able to apply and work for a U.S. company, by being "sponsored" by their company.

Well, they've run out of spots for 2016.

Each year there are 20k work visas for people who graduated MSc in the US and 65k work visas for the rest of world.

That means if you got an offer to work from a startup or a big tech firm there are about 23% changes you'll get the visa.

I see your point here, and it is valid -- to some extent.

Yes, the "Indian" consultancies have been exploiting this system for ages and US Govt has been trying its best for past three years to not grant visas if USCIS can not establish Employer-Employee relationship. But still these consultancies always find loop holes.

I have come to this country as an immigrant as well. I went to an average university first in midwest and then transferred to a top 10 engineering school. I have seen "Americans" who can not do basic algebra in Calculus 1 classes. And I have studied/work with "Americans" who are at the top of their game. It is really subjective. Unfortunately, American media is exporting "Booty Culture" (think Kim K.) to the world rather than preaching about their rockstar scientists and engineers.

> job after paid training ($5k) 2. After 3-month long training they totally and completely faked my resume. I.e. included 5-years experience, fake credentials, fake references. 3. Got me a job with large, large bank. 4. Got half my salary for 6-months. 5. After that I was on my own as I couldnt stand lies anymore.

Wow, your lie tolerance threshold must be way higher than most people. I know a few very needy people who balked several times at "fake experience". You just can't hide that, esp not with poor English!

> From my experience 90% + people from H-1B is on these terms in the US.

If you meant 90% of all H-1Bs - then it clearly falls into lying category. May be if you compromised so much for the job you don't have so much of a problem vastly upwards estimating something that benefits your viewpoint?!

May be it's not 90% but I have a friend who experienced the same thing, she gave up after 2 weeks once she realized the lie. I honestly think the US government is lazy in this aspect. It's not that hard to track down those consultancies. Not relevant but that reminds me of the tax case where an unemployed girl filed for $2M tax return and got the money (only got caught later when she lost her card).

And then you also have the fake universities giving out diplomas and OPT: http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_25410171/visa-mil...

Immigration is one of the hottest debate topics at the moment, and H1-Bs especially have huge repercussions for the tech sector. My guess is that this particular article is being upvoted because people here want to discuss it.

"slightly higher"? I know that slightly is subjective, but going from 175k to 233k seems quite significant to me... Especially considering that last year was already a new record.

The same thing (lottery for H1B) happened only the last 2 years (2013 and 2014), not for 4+ years (before that 2007 and 2008 also had a lottery).

It is relevant to HN because if we you start a company and need to hire, it can impact your strategy. If you're a software engineer, it shows that there is a high demand and it can be time to review alternative offers.

I'm neither an immigrant nor an employer, but I care. In the comments I learned a fair bit about issues with my countries immigration policies which I did not already know.

Because HN caters to tech audience and majority of the H1-B petitioners are tech workers. Get it?