Nearly three months after the US immigration agency started accepting petitions for the H-1B visas for highly-skilled foreign professionals, it is still looking for more than 20,000 applications to fill the Congressionally-mandated cap of 65,000.
Amid the economic downturn and protectionist provisions in the US stimulus package, the demand for the visas, which is mostly availed by Indian professionals, has slowed down.
The latest figures released by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reveal that approximately 44,800 H-1B petitions have been received by it so far.
In the last few years, there was huge demand of H-1B visas, with the USCIS receiving several times the quota of 65,000 in the first few days itself. It had to resort to computerised lottery to determine the successful applicants.
But with the current economic downturn and certain provisions in the economic stimulus package, the H-1B petitions to the USCIS centres are now coming in ones and twos.
This is in contrast to the last few years, when the US Postal Services had been making special arrangements for delivery of bundles of H-1B petitions.
The economic stimulus package prevents hiring of foreign workers by companies receiving federal aid money.