In less than two months, the United States Citizenship and
Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting applications for
the much-coveted H-1B visa. The H-1B visa allows foreign workers to
work in the United States for a temporary period in a
"specialty occupation."
Employers planning to hire foreign workers in the coming fiscal
year should be mindful of the increasingly competitive nature of
H-1B visas – and the importance of planning ahead!
The USCIS allots a mere 65,000 visas per year for applicants
with a Bachelor's degree and 20,000 additional visas for
applicants with advanced degrees. Because the demand for H-1B visas
far exceeds the number of visas available under the cap, the USCIS
typically stops accepting applications one week into the H-1B
filing period, which starts on April 1. It then completes a
computer-generated process to randomly select 85,000 visas for
consideration and rejects the remaining applications outright. Due
to the sheer volume
