Roll up, roll up, get your H1-B visa applications in now!

January 21 2009 by Gareth McConnell

The circus show has left Capitol Hill, the clown has retired to Texas and an air of optimism has swept the big top from Washington to Warsaw, there’s a new master of travelling ceremonies in town so what is he going to do for US immigration and in particular the H1B visa?

The demand for H1B visas has far outstripped supply for years. In 2007, 123,500 petitions were filed in the first two days. Within those 48 hours the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) stopped accepting visa applications and employers were told to wait another year.

In 2008 the visa application process lasted 5 days when more than 163,000 were filed, including 31,200 against the advanced degree quota. Eventually a lottery system allocated the remaining numbers and again applicants and employers told to wait another year.

That year is almost up. Filing for 2009 H1B visa applications opens on April 1, for a US visa granting employment to start on October 1.

If previous years are anything to go by you’ll need to start working on your visa application now or risk walking the tight rope come April.

But there’s a new administration in town. Headed by a man who supported an Immigration Bill in 2007, which if passed, would have raised the annual quota of H1B visas to 180,000 from the current 65,000, he believes in doubling the basic research budget and granting the large number of foreign researchers on H1B visas US citizenship.

Barack Obama also believes in favouring employers who create jobs in the US, as opposed to outsourcing overseas, and stripping large companies of tax breaks who do. If jobs can’t be filled by the domestic workforce it’s sure to create more demand for increased H1B numbers.

Obama’s choice of Governor Janet Napolitano is another indicator of imminent changes to US immigration rules. Napolitano is vocal in her support of increasing the number of H1B visa numbers.

“The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good,” Barack Obama.