For Two Years the H1b Visa Cap filled on April 1, the day it opened with triple the applications as spots open. This year the cap remains unfilled.
(EMAILWIRE.COM, April 10, 2009 ) H1B Visas, Foreign Credential Evaluations Still Available: April 10, 2009
The USCIS has just released a statement that the H1B Visa caps for Fiscal Year 2010 have not yet been filled. This means that anyone with the needed foreign academic credentials who has their paperwork submitted before the cap is filled may still receive an H1B visa this year!
Each year, the USCIS offers 65,000 H1B Visas to foreign professionals holding at least a Bachelor’s Degree. In addition, the agency reserves 20,000 H1B Visas for professionals whose academic credentials are at least equal to a U.S. Master’s Degree. In recent years, these visas have been quickly issued to workers eager to work in the United States. Most are sponsored by large companies.
Not surprisingly, the visa cap has been slower to fill this year because of the U.S. economic recession. Businesses have been slower to hire workers with foreign degrees because of the country’s high unemployment rates.
Despite this, however, certain positions require academic credentials that U.S. workers just don’t have. If professionals from other countries aren’t hired to meet these demands, the jobs are not filled. H1B visas don’t take jobs away from American citizens. Instead, they are used to help companies fill needed positions when no workers from this country are available to be hired.
Executive Director Sheila Danzig of Career Consulting International (CCI), a prominent foreign credential evaluation service, reports that this year’s visa season has been somewhat slower than anticipated. “We are still receiving plenty of applications for foreign degree evaluations, but large companies are not processing as many H1B visas as they have in previous years. To some extent this maybe a result of the government cracking down on fraud in the system.”
As a result, the professionals at CCI are still ready to respond to urgent requests for foreign credential evaluations. To get more information about whether your academic credentials meet U.S. requirements, visit
www.thedegreepeople.com, or call the toll-free number for customer support at 1-800-771-4723. Employers can also get more information about whether a prospective employee’s educational credentials will meet the USCIS requirements for an H1B visa.
To date, the USCIS has not released figures concerning the number of visas that are still available. The recent press release stated only that if enough petitions are received to fill meet the caps, that agency will release an advisory that the cap was met as of the date the maximum number of petitions are received.
Don’t make the mistake of delaying, however, or hoping that the USCIS caps will wait for your credentials evaluation to be completed. Get it done as quickly as possible so that the cap isn’t filled before your petition is submitted. No one who applies after the cap date will be approved, and no one knows when the cap date will occur. Don’t take a chance – start the academic credentials evaluation process as soon as possible. Today isn’t too late, but tomorrow may be!]]>