The Hindu : U.S. closes applications for 2004 H-1B visas

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 19, 2004

International

International

U.S. closes applications for 2004 H-1B visas

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, FEB.18. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it has received enough petitions for the H-1B visas for the Fiscal Year 2004 that it will no longer accept new petitions for first-time employment.

The Congressionally-mandated cap is 65,000 new workers for the current fiscal year.

In a statement, the USCIS said that it would be following a procedure for the remainder of Fiscal 2004 that would include processing of all petitions filed for first-time employment received at the end of business day February 17, 2004; and returning of all petitions for first-time employment subject to the annual cap, with the filing fee.

Petitioners have been told that they may re-submit their petitions when H-1B visas become available for Fiscal 2005 and that the earliest date a petitioner may file a request for a H-1B for Fiscal 2005 with a starting employment date of October 1, 2004 would be April 1, 2004. The USCIS, a functional agency within the Department of Homeland Security, said that petitions for current H-1B workers do not count for the Congressionally-mandated cap.However, the agency will continue to process the petitions to extend the amount of time current H-1B workers may remain in the United States, change the employment terms and allow them to work concurrently in a second H-1B position.

The USCIS said that petitions for the new H-1B employment were not subjected to the annual cap if someone was seeking employment at an institution of higher education or affiliated non-profit entity, or at a non-profit research organisation or governmental research organisation. In an election-year, law-makers in the United States Congress as also Democratic candidates seeking the party nomination for the Presidential election of November 2 are focussing on the economy and jobs with some of the attention on the latter having to do with losses on the job front on account of outsourcing or bringing in workers from overseas — India, for instance — and in the process displacing American jobs.

While the cap on the H-1B visas has come down from a high of 1,95,000 to the present 65,000, law-makers are seeing if similar limitations can be placed on the L-visas.

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