Eweek.com reports a sharp decrease in the issuance of H1B visas in the past two years, after gaging statistics from the Department of State and interviewing Kellie Lego, a Maryland based immigration attorney. H1B visas are temporary employment visas normally given for three years and that can be renewed one time only for another three years to qualified foreigners needed to fill certain positions at American companies. Though the Department of Homeland Security would not speculate why there would be this drop of almost 30% in the number of H1B visa recipients, Lego blames the economy in the US, as well as certain increased scrutiny both at the consular level and at the border by U.S. Customs and Border Inspection.
What the article fails to mention is that, added to the above-noted reasons, a couple of years ago, the filing fees for H1B visas increased tremendously. These filing fees are of course nonrefundable regardless of the result. Also, there was a significant reduction by Congress for the numbers of visas available, leading prospective employees to rush their applications all on the first available date and then wait for a lottery type of draw to see if their applications would be lucky enough to be randomly selected.
I don't have a problem with increased scrutiny since it is true that the H1B process has been abused in the past, by people who were planning from the getgo not to work in the positions asserted by their employers, for various reasons. A concern is the fact that review of a consular decision or a decision by the Border officer is left pretty much entirely to their discretion and there is little or no system for a meaningful review by an appellate body in place.
Given all these hurdles, it is understandable that less people would want to undergo the burden of moving their entire family or even planning for such a move, when they cannot be certain in the end that they will be selected and admitted under this category. The article from eweek.com can be found here.
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