Apr
27
H-1B Cap Hits Silicon Valley
Filed Under H-1B Visa
The limit on H-1B visas will have a severely negative effect on the IT industry, according to those in the business in Silicon Valley.
At the last census in 2000, it was found that over half the engineers in the valley were foreign-born, mostly of Indian or Chinese origin. But now the majority of software engineers and programmers graduating from US universities will have to go home, thanks to the extremely limited amount of visa’s available.
A record was set in April for the number of H-1B applications sent in to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). Only 65,000 H-1B visas were available and over 130,000 applications were received in USCIS processing centers on the first day the petitions were allowed to be sent in (02APR07).
Even Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has strongly criticized the government for the visa shortage, claiming that the US will suffer from lack of labor in the highly skilled IT industry.