US immigration reveals just 44,000 work permit petitions filed so far
April 21 2009 by Liam Clifford
Only 44,000 of the 65,000 available quota for H-1B petition filings have been submitted so far for the 2010 financial year, according to an update from US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The petitions quota for the sought-after highly skilled US worker visas (H-1B visas) is usually filled extremely quickly, but the number of firms wanting to bring in foreigners to work in the US has fallen. This is partly due to protectionist measures introduced by Barack Obama, preventing banks that have been bailed out with public funds from easily recruiting foreign workers. So far, companies have had three weeks to submit their petitions. In previous years, the quota has been filled within days.
The agency says it is continuing to accept petitions from companies, until it reaches its 65,000 cap. It also announced it had received 20,000 petitions from foreigners with advanced degrees but will continue to accept petitions as experience has revealed that many of the initial 20,000 will not be approvable. It added that the 20,000 advanced degree petitions will not be counted in the 65,000 quota for H-1B petitions.
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