Full quota not used for first time since 2003; downturn prompted cutback.
The H-1B visa programme that catapults Indians into the Silicon Valley and the Wall Street is on track for leaving thousands of spots unfilled for the first time since 2003. Rising protectionist tides and the anemic US job market with 9.8% unemployment depre-ssed demand for foreign worker visas.
Last year, even as the recession began to bite, 1,63,000 H-1B visa petitions were submitted in the first five days of filing, forcing US officials to pick winners in a random lottery. It took as little as 24 hours last year for the queue to fill up on April 1, the first day when applications can be filed. This year, however, as of September 25, nearly six months after the US government started accepting applications, only 46,700 petitions had been filed, even though there are 65,000 visas available.
“Applicants enjoy a golden opportunity of scoring an H-1B visa this year. Even during the dotcom bust, the application pool was larger,” immigration lawyer David Parker told DNA.
Unemployment has created a great deal of friction over the H-1B visa program. Earlier this year, Congress banned financial institutions like the Bank of America which have used funds from the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP) from hiring foreigners under the H-1B program. Unfortunately, the top H1-B visa sponsors are the same banks that got TARP money. They have the expensive legal counsel to handle the bureaucracy of the H1-B visa process but their hands are now tied. Lawyers’ fees, filing fees and other expenses for an H-1B visa can easily hit up to $5,000.
The Wall Street Journal suggested on Thursday that for Indian outsourcing companies, historically the largest recipients of H-1B visas, “the economy as well as political pressure have prompted a cutback in applications”. It said the recession had trimmed technology budgets at their US clients.
It added that they were also put off by Washington scrutinising hiring from abroad more closely amid high unemployment in the US. In 2008, four of the top five H-1B recipients were Indian technology firms - Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and Tata Consultancy, while the fifth was Microsoft.
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