H-1B Approvals for 2006

Date: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 4:16 PM

JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

by Rob Sanchez
August 02, 2005 No. 1305

H-1B visas are being approved for 2006 at such a fast rate that there won't be any left by the time it's 2006! That's because filings for visas were accepted six months in advance starting on April Fools Day. I'm not joking about the day either - it was officially 4/1/2005.

To see the newest numbers on H-1B and H-2B visas go to this USCIS webpage:
http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/tempbenefits/cap.htm

These are the total H-1B visas for 2006 as of August 1, 2005.

Visas Approved ...... 25,287
Visas Pending ....... 31,637
Total H-1B Visas .... 56,924

57,000 jobs is a lot to give away, so you would think that our government would post the Labor Condition Applications (LCA) online so we could see all those jobs that will be going to foreign workers next year. You never know what could happen, like for instance an American that wants a high-paying job at prevailing salaries might see a position that he/she wants to have apply for before the H-1B arrives. They could then call the employer and announce that they were a qualified American that needs the job they filed an LCA for. Keep in mind that employers are under no obligation to hire Americans, and they don't have to claim they can't find an American, but the Dept. of Labor is obligated by law to make this data available to the public in a timely fashion. Offering the data after the job has been taken by an H-1B doesn't seem very timely to me.

So far the DOL hasn't made that data available to the public at their website:
http://www.flcdatacenter.com/download.aspx

Several concerned activists have called the U.S. Department of Labor to ask why the data hasn't been made available to the public. So far they haven't received and answer, and in most cases they were only able to leave a message. If any of you make the phone call and talk to a real human being, let me know what happened!

Some of the pertinent phone numbers are as follows:

Employment and Training Administration (ETA): 202-693-3840

DOL Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): 202-693-3010

A Programmersguild webpage about fake job ads has another phone number:
http://www.programmersguild.org/rir/sacbeeletter_15may2005.html

The numbers in the article below are close but don't exactly add up to the published USCIS website. Perhaps the webpage was recently changed, or it could be that it needs to be changed.

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http://www.workpermit.com/news/2005_08_05/us/h1b_cap_nearly_filled.htm

02 August 2005

On 1 Aug., the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that 47,395 new H1B petitions had already been filed against the fiscal year (FY) 2006 cap. The United States H1B visa is a non-immigrant visa, which allows a US company to employ a foreign individual for up to six years.

This reflects approximately 20,000 filings in the month of July 2005. If new H1B petition filings continue at this rate, the cap is likely to be reached within a few weeks. The H1B cap for regular cases is 65,000 for each fiscal year (October 1 to September 30). However, 6,800 H1Bs are set aside for nationals of Chile and Singapore.

Only 58,200 new H1Bs are available for the general public. Of those, just under 11,000 H1Bs remain for the coming FY2006, which begins October 1, 2005 and ends on September 30, 2006. However, the H1B filings for new H1Bs under the FY2006 quota were permitted as of April 1, 2005, six months in advance of the start date of the FY2006 quota.

In addition to the 65,000 H1B cap, there are 20,000 special cap exemptions for people with U.S. masters' degrees and education beyond a U.S. master's degree. These H1B numbers still are available for both FY2005 and FY2006. About half of the 20,000 allotted for FY2005 have been used to date; while fewer of the FY2006 higher education H1Bs have been used so far, with 7,646 H1B filings either approved or pending.

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