Greater Demand For US H1-B Work Visas, Limit Expected To Be Exhausted On First Day

20 Mar 2014

The demand for US work visas H1-B for the next year is likely to be so high that the set quota of 65,000 may be exhausted on the first day of submission – 1st April.

In the previous year, the maximum set numerical limit was reached on 5th April that was considerably quicker than in the years. Currently, as the economy of America is improving, rate of unemployment dropping and with recovering IT demand, there is need to invest in latest technologies such as mobile devices, analytics and cloud, and as a result, the demand for foreign workers is rising fast.

The US H1-B work visa is a non-immigrant visa, which permits US employers to employ overseas workers temporarily. The biggest users of this visa are Indian IT companies of US subsidiaries, which account for more than half of the cap. US employers make use of both L1 visa and H1-B visa to shift the Indian IT employees to work temporarily to client locations which cannot be done remotely.

It is expected that there would be greater demand for H1-B work visas for the year 2014 than 2013, and it is predicted that the cap may be reached in less than 7 days, maybe on 1st April itself. According to the law firms, to maximize the chance of getting an H1-B work visa, it is advisable to file for the H1-B petition on 1st April 2014.

The American government has been deliberating regarding the proposed immigration bill and also to increase the quota from 65,000 to 115,000, and subsequently change the quota depending upon the demand. But, the bill is still far from being passed and implemented.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services stops accepting H1-B work visas when the numerical limit has been reached. And then, it uses a lottery-based selection procedure to select applicants and maintains the limit of 65,000.