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Update: Now its official. USCIS announced today that it received about 163,000 H1B petitions for year 2009 that starts from 1st of October 2008. About 31,200 of those are for Advanced Degree category. Read more. It will be a lottery to accept petitions. I wish you all good luck to you. So, to answer my question I posed in January, whether H1B rush will repeat in 2008, as expected, the answer is a big YES.
Originally posted by Low Orbit
You white collar type are all alike. 163k in H1B visas is laughable. Our labor force is over 130 million so what is 163k. You guys who see this as a major issue are probably the same guys who don't care about illegal alliens. There were between 10 and 20 million illegal alliens in our country last year of which less than 2 percent were here looking for H1B visas. Maybe you guys should look at the broader issue.
I do find it worrisome when governement contractors and NASA are coming out openly and stating that we don't have enough educated people to fill the amount of jobs they currently need.
Of course Bill Gates and any other biz owner is going to want more liberal laws on H1B visas and any other legal way to get otherwise illegal labor in the country. The larger a labor pool the more skilled it is likely to be and the cheaper it will be according to the laws of supply and demand.
Originally posted by sos37
...why not push for spending on programs to encourage more enrollments in science and technology in colleges? If we lack skilled labor, why the hell are we looking for shortcuts by bringing in foreigners to do the work and send the money elsewhere instead of focusing on how to enroll more bright minds FROM this country in science and tech fields where the workers are needed most?