The H1b visas & Jobs in United States

The American Government offers a significant number of temporary and permanent migration options for those looking to live and work in America. Broadly visas are of different kinds such as tourist visa, business visa, diversity lottery, work visa, family visa, green card visa. Those who wish to stay and work in the United States H1B Visa is the ideal visa. What exactly is H1b Visa? An H1B Visa is a kind of non immigrant work visa permit available to a foreigner who has been offered a job by a company in United States.

This visa category applies to people who wish to perform services in a specialty occupation, services of exceptional merit and ability relating to a Department of Defense (DOD) cooperative research and development project, or services as a fashion model of distinguished merit or ability. However IT and Telecom is a very popular sector attracting lots of peoples worldwide every year. Most foreign workers in IT and Telecom sector fall under H-1B Specialty Occupations* visa type.

The H-1B visa can be classified into the following visa types

H-1B Specialty Occupations*

H-1B2 – DOD (Department of Defense) Researcher and Development Project Worker

H-1B3 - Fashion Model

Visas are provided for a limited period of time. The maximum duration of the H-1B visa is six years (ten years for exceptional Defense Department project-related work). H-1B holders who want to continue to work in the U.S. after six years, but who have not obtained permanent residency status, must remain outside of the United States. for one year before reapplying for another H-1B visa. However the above rules have the following exceptions:

If a visa holder has submitted an I-140 immigrant petition or a labor certification prior to their fifth year anniversary of having the H-1B visa, they are entitled to renew their H-1B visa in one-year or three-year increments until a decision has been rendered on their application for permanent residence.

If the visa holder has an approved I-140 immigrant petition, but is unable to initiate the final step of the green card process due to their priority date not being current, they may be entitled to a three-year extension of their H-1B visa.

Though there is a limitation for getting visas for US immigration, it has generally been set at 65,000 visas per year. The number of new H1B job visas issued each year in the United States is subject to an annual congressionally-mandated quota. Each H-1B quota applies to a particular Financial Year which begins on October 1. Applications for the upcoming Financial Year are accepted beginning on the preceding April 1 (or the first working day after that date).

For FY 2009, USCIS announced that the entire quota for visas for the year has been reached, for both 20,000 Advanced and the 65,000 quota. USCIS would complete initial data entry for all filing received during April 1 to April 7, 2008 before running the lottery.

A recent survey for US Immigration is quite encouraging especially for those talented peoples who are willing to set up their work base in the United States. For FY 2010, USCIS announced that enough petitions were received to reach the year quota. A very recent analysis indicates that the FY 2011 cap may be reached sometime between early October and November since the economy is picking up and the recession is easing.