Tag Archives: bachelors degree

H1B Visa Statistics

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We thought coming up to another H1B visa season we would give you some perspective on the H1B visa itself. So we will cover some of the more recent and historical statistics about this visa category to both give you an idea as to where to focus on this year and also how well prepared you need to be with your H1B Application filing.

H1B Immigration Year H1B Visa Cap Reached
FY2004 October 1, 2003
FY2005 October 1, 2004
FY2006 August 10, 2005
FY2007 May 26, 2006
FY2008 April 3, 2007
FY2009 April 7, 2008
FY2010 December 21, 2009

Credit (http://redbus2us.com)

So you can see the really crazy period was between 2006-2008 prior to the Global Economic crisis where the 65,000 cap was reached soon after the April 1 H1B visa filing opening. In 2004, the H1B visa quota was set back to 65,000 with the 20,000 extra cap for the US Advanced Degree holders exemption.
Prior to 2004 for 2 years, the H1B visa cap was 195,000 under the American 21st Century Competitiveness Act and then before that for 3 years it was 115,000 under the American Competitiveness Workforce Improvement Act.

Interestingly from 2001-2003, the H1B visa cap was never reached in the immigration year and in 1999 the USCIS issued more H1B visa than they had available. This was found after an audit by KPMG following the H1B visa season.

Now as we well known the past H1B visa season Fy2010 that recently concluded in December, 2009 was a extra long season due to the global economic crisis causing both US workers and foreigners to be laid off. In fact when you look at the top H1B visa employers of this past season, there was a marked change from previous years where some of the usual heavyweights like Tata and Infosys didn’t feature and companies like Microsoft were far less active in hiring foreigners.

To give you an idea of what the past H1B visa season was like we will look at some of the statistics released by the USCIS. Approximately 43% of all H1B petitions were for computer specialties. Most of these tended to be system analyst types as they as a subset were close to 38% of approved petitions.

A full third of the approved H1B visa applications were in the areas of education, engineering, architecture and executive areas Occupations in architecture, engineering, surveying, education, and executive specializations constituted another 33% of the total H-1B petitions approved. Drilling down further, electronic and electrical engineers represented about 4% where as Auditors and Accountants were closer to 5%.

Finally approximately 45% of people who were approved this past H1B visa season’s highest level of education was a Bachelor’s degree. This is showing the growing trend towards to advanced degree qualifications in the US being the norm and being the better ticket for a foreigner to finding work successfully in the US.

CJ

E3 Visa – The Bachelors Degree & Specialty Occupation Conditions

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Back after a mini break which in the end was only 4 days without posting 🙂 Hope you all did not miss me too much. Since the title is a common question I get asked, I thought I would do a mini post about it.

So the E3 Visa has this requirement about Bachelor Degree and the role being a specialty occupation. Look even if you read the US Embassy FAQ about this, the definition is really a whole bunch of words that mean nothing.

In short the E3 Visa will apply if the job you are applying for in the US has a Bachelors Degree as one of the requirements or conditions for hiring a candidate. Now that does not necessarily mean you need a bachelors degree that is relevant to the role you are being hired for or even a Bachelors Degree at all.

In the US the undergraduate degree system is a lot more general so people may major in Political Science for example but go into Investment Banking. So if you have an Arts, Commerce, Science, Engineering or Law Degree as an Australian that will pretty much cover you for most roles.

They may ask you a question at the Consulate interview about this but that is easily answered by “you having a desire to go into **** field because that is where your talent and passion lies and your degree gives you great underlying knowledge to pursue it” (or something to that effect 🙂 haha) Most likely it will never even come up.

If you don’t have a bachelors degree, the so-called rule is that you have 2 to 2.5 years of relevant work experience in lieu of each year of a standard degree in the field you are applying for. Now in Australia you can get Bachelors Degrees in 3 years but in the US it generally takes 4 years to get an undergraduate bachelors degree.

My tip is if you don’t have a degree but you have 9-12 years of verifiable work experience that is directly related to the role you have applied for and won in the US, and the employer has successfully filed an received the LCA from the US Department of Labor for you to take to the Visa Interview, then you will be fine! (of course the more experience the better!!)

So a specialty occupation for the E3 visa really becomes a role which requires specialized knowledge that can be obtained either by you having a Bachelors Degree or enough relevant work experience.

Of course for the E3 Visa, if your role requires some sort of certification that you need to do in the US to ply your trade in addition to your background qualifications, then you will have to that as well soon after entering the US.

Hope this clears things up.

CJ