With H-1B Visa Cap Reached, U.S. Still Hungry for Skilled Workers
Date: July 9, 2012
The Examiner
July 7, 2012
By mid-June, less than halfway through 2012, federal officials announced that the United States had reached the cap set by Congress for H-1B visas issued to foreign born workers.
The H-1B visa program is a crucial tool used by employers in this country to attract and hire skilled foreign workers in specialty fields. These workers most typically fill positions in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields that employers can not fill with the existing domestic talent pool. However, applicants for H-1B visas can in fact come from a number of fields even beyond the technology sector.
Congress has established a cap of 65,000 H-1B visas to be issued annually, and now that this cap has been reached for 2012, many companies are already scrambling to fill vacancies in their rosters of skilled workers.