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Employers Fill 2006 High-Tech Visa Quotas

The Associated Press
Friday, August 12, 2005; 6:56 PM

WASHINGTON -- Immigration officials said Friday they are no longer accepting applications for H1-B visas for high-tech and specialty workers because they have enough to meet the 2006 quota.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, received enough applications by Wednesday to meet the quota, agency said. The cutoff of applications comes a little more than a month earlier than last year.


Federal law provides 65,000 H1-B visas every fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Of those, 6,800 are set aside for workers from Chile and Singapore under terms of U.S. trade agreements with those countries.

The visas are granted to foreigners in specialty professions such as scientists, engineers and computer programmers. H1-B visas are good for up to six years. Under the program, employers must pay foreign workers the prevailing wage for their job fields and show that qualified U.S. workers are not being passed over.

The visas are controversial. High-tech and other employers say too few such visas are available and more are needed, but groups representing labor unions and high-tech workers say Americans are being replaced by foreign workers who work for less money.

Visas are still available for some of the additional 20,000 H1-B visas Congress provided for foreigners with a U.S.-earned master's degree or higher U.S. degree. Foreigners who work at higher education institutions or a nonprofit or government research organization on H1-B visas are not counted in the annual cap. The agency still is accepting applications in those categories.