Lottery will decide number of us H-1B visas, now

It was the run of IT services companies for the applications process for the temporary us H-1B visas begins on April 1. IT services companies are meant for the mad run of limited number of us visas that would be decided through a lottery system in the likely event of demand exceeding supply.

Even if this issue has regarded as fodder for the anti-outsourcing camp in the US, it’s the Indian companies who call it a challenge to tap vast on-site resources there.

According to Infosys HR chief TV Mohandas Pai, “It shows our ability to do work on-site but you can’t work around it. You have to comply with the regulations,”

The US government received 124,000 applications for H-1B visas Last year, nearly double the cap of 65,000, so the visas were awarded by lottery. This year too, it is expected that visa approvals will happen through lottery. . The IT industry faces an acute talent shortage in the US and hence, the constraints due to the cap are felt more severely by it. There are about 300,000-400,000 IT job positions in the US that are not filled.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told the US Congress to increase the visa cap, citing his own company’s inability to hire as many foreign workers as it wanted to. “Last year, Microsoft was unable to obtain H-1B visas for one-third of the highly qualified foreign-born job candidates that we wanted to hire,”.