H-1B visa: US-educated applicants preferred

New York: The US government has announced new regulations to give greater preference to workers with advanced degrees from US institutions for H-1B non-immigrant professional visas. The new rules that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Wednesday will go into effect on April 1 and could potentially reduce the visas available to candidates educated elsewhere. The DHS said in a statement that it was estimated that the new regulations will lead to 5,340 – or 16 per cent – more H-1B visas for workers with a Master’s or Ph.D degrees from US institutions. Explaining the new rules, Doug Rand, an independent immigration expert, said now all applicants will first be put into the same pool and 65,000 will be selected for the visas open to all, then all the unselected US advanced degree-holders would be moved into the pool reserved for them and 20,000 of them will be randomly picked. This would give US-educated professionals who did not get selected in the first round another chance at getting the highly-coveted visas. Congress set the limit of 65,000 H-1B visas every year and the additional quota of 20,000 for professionals with higher education qualifications from the US.