US immigration provides unlimited number of work visas for Irish students
April 20 2009 by Liam Clifford
The US embassy in Ireland has revealed that there will be no limit on the number of Irish students and recent graduates who can move to the US on visas that allow them to work in the US for a period of one year.
A spokesperson at the embassy stated, "on the US side, we have not put
any upper limit on the amount of people who can apply.” This follows
initial reports that an upper limit of 20,000 was to be made available.
There have also been reports that the take-up of the ‘J’ visas had been
disappointing, despite many people requesting information about the
programme. The slow rate of applications has been attributed to
students’ confusion as to their eligibility, presuming the visa was
similar to the Australian temporary worker visas. However, the
eligibility criteria for the J visa is much more complex.
The spokesperson added that there were no statistics available
regarding the number of the visa applications made so far, but added,
“anecdotally, a lot of people have asked about it.”
Some 5,000 US students will be able to move to Ireland to work for a year under the same programme.
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