WASHINGTON -- Businesses across the United States can expect some unwanted mail in the coming weeks: thousands of rejected visa applications for high-tech foreign workers.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is planning to return thousands of petitions after receiving more than 133,000 applications in two days. That far exceeds the 65,000 yearly cap for the H-1B visas, which allow highly skilled foreigners to work in the United States for several years.
High-tech companies say that the lack of visas will leave them without needed workers and hurt their ability to compete globally.
"Because of arbitrary visa caps, we are now in the position of graduating thousands of the world's top innovators, engineers and scientists and telling them they cannot work in the United States," said Robert Hoffman, vice president for government and public affairs at Oracle and co-chair of Compete America, a coalition of high-tech companies that includes Microsoft Corp.
Chris Rhatigan, a spokeswoman for USCIS, said that the agency hired extra staff to sort through the record 133,000 pieces of mail. She said it would take several weeks to figure out exactly how many applications have been received, because each piece of mail could contain several petitions.
All the applications received Monday and Tuesday will be entered into a database, and 65,000 will be randomly selected for approval.
In addition, 20,000 additional visas will be allotted for foreigners with advanced degrees from American universities to stay and work in the United States.
"We have to be fair to everybody, and this is the best way to be fair," Rhatigan said.
Applications not selected will be returned to the sponsoring companies, along with the application fees, and will be "considered rejected," she added. Since the agency is required to accept applications for only two days, those received after Tuesday also will be returned to the petitioning businesses.
The next opportunity to file will be April 1, 2008.
Ted Ruthizer, chair of the Business Immigration Group at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, a law firm in New York, said that the record-breaking number of applications surprised industry experts and proved there is a "huge demand for foreign national professionals in a whole variety of fields."
"Everyone knew that there was going to be a crush of filings ... [but] nobody expected this," he said.
