Eric Thomas or Frances Cox 202/822-9491 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 11, 2008

FY 2009 H-1B Visa Applications Exceed Last Year’s Numbers

U.S. Employers Denied Access to More Highly Educated Professionals Who Contribute to U.S. Innovation and Job Growth

Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that a preliminary number of nearly 163,000 applications had been received during the filing period ending on April 7, 2008, for the FY 2009 allotment of H-1B visas.  More than 31,200 of those petitions were just for the advanced degree category. 

Next week USCIS expects to conduct a random selection process to pick winning applicants, beginning with the selection of the 20,000 petitions received for the advanced degree cap exemption.  Those petitions not selected under the advanced degree category will join the random selection process for the overall 65,000 limit.   
“As expected, tens of thousands of highly educated professionals will lose the random lottery, and America’s door will be shut to this talent,” said Robert Hoffman, Vice President for Government and Public Affairs at Oracle and Co-Chair of Compete America. “The USCIS announcement is just further proof of the absurdity of America’s legal immigration system for highly educated, much-needed worldwide talent.  Congress must address this problem once and for all this year.”

To view H-1B lottery ticket options facing highly skilled professionals and for more information on how highly skilled immigration benefits America, please visit www.competeamerica.org. 

Compete America (www.competeamerica.org) is a coalition of corporations, educators, research institutions and trade associations concerned about legal, employment-based immigration and committed to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated workforce necessary to ensure continued innovation, job creation and leadership in a worldwide economy.

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