International work visas to be distributed through lottery

For international students, working in the United States after graduation will become more difficult.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced in March that petitions for H-1B international work visas — which allow internationals to temporarily live and work in the United States for three years — will now be run through a lottery system. They have also set a quota of 65,000 visas for the 2014 Fiscal Year.

The USCIS began accepting FY 2014 H-1B applications this Monday and they speculate that they will receive more petitions between April 1 and April 5 than the quota allows. Should they receive more than 65,000 applications, the USCIS will use the lottery system to randomly select petitions to fill in any available visa spots that may open up.

A lottery has not been utilized since FY 2008, and in recent years, the quota for applications has varied around 60,000. For the past several years, the depressed economy had left many H-1B visa spots untaken.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this move towards a lottery system for visas is a sign of a strengthening economy, as companies have increased the number of foreign hires within the past two years.

Director of Career Services Pat Rose echoed the sentiment. While the need for the use of the lottery system is “a happy problem that signifies a strengthening economy,” it is also a major concern for international students and alumni who plan on applying for work visas to stay in the U.S. after graduation, she said.

The U.S. Senate is currently working on a broader-immigration reform bill, which currently includes a proposal to increase the number of H-1B visas given.

Current full-time students studying here from abroad hold F1 visas. Under USCIS’s Optional Practical Training program, students with F1 visas have a period of one year after graduation to work in the United States without needing to acquire an H-1B visa.

Students have a grace period of 60 days upon completion of the OPT program before they must leave the United States. They may then apply for an H-1B visa if they intend to come back to the U.S. to work.

Before an applicant can be eligible for an H-1B visa, an employer must offer them a job and sponsor the applicant’s petition to the USCIS. The applicant must then, upon approval of the employer’s petition, apply for the visa.

The introduction of the lottery system has caused concern among recent and soon-to-be international graduates, who fear the new system will lessen their chances of acquiring the necessary visa to stay in the U.S. to work.

Wharton senior Natalie Tse said, “My friends who are applying for visas consider it an inconvenience … they’re worried that it will just make the process of staying in the country harder.”

“It is not fair to turn away talent merely based on numbers,” said College senior Ayesha Kadan, who is an international student from India.

Some international students, though, do not plan on staying in the U.S. after graduation. Tse, an international student from Hong Kong, plans to return there after graduation. While she is doing so partly for personal reasons, she also feels as though she has a better chance of getting a job abroad.

“I just feel like our competitive advantage as international students is probably better served back at home than here,” she said.

Kadan, who wants to go into marketing, also does not plan on staying in the U.S. for work.

“A lot of marketing firms here do not sponsor visas,” Kadan said. She will instead be moving to Singapore after graduation for a job.

She thinks that the quota for H-1B visas should be expanded — particularly for university graduates. These students, she said, have “a very high skill level, and their talent should not go to waste” just because they cannot obtain a work visa.

In some cases, students who had summer internships at large companies are able to arrange for their visa situations to be handled by the legal departments of those firms so that they’re able to work after their OPT period ends.

Wharton senior and Seoul-native Sonya Park, a former vice president of the Assembly of International Students, worked as an intern at Citigroup last summer and has already signed a two-year contract for a full-time position after graduation. While the first year of her job will be spent under her OPT visa, Park said if she does not receive her work visa after the OPT ends, Citigroup will then reapply for a H-1B visa on her behalf.

Park also mentioned that there are other visa options for international students applying to certain fields, like the possibility of an extension to an OPT visa for certain scientific fields.

In light of her own experience and the knowledge she has of the work visa process, Park thinks that it would be “fair” to expand the quota, “given that there’s demand from American corporations and it’s not like these foreign professionals are displacing any American workers.”

Opponents of expanding the quota say that the more international workers that are allowed to stay here, the fewer American workers will get jobs.

“I see both arguments to it. In this country, there always has been anxiety over international workers taking American jobs,” College freshman Varun Menon said. “In this case, I think it’s truly amiss.”

Menon, who during his time as a representative on the Undergraduate Assembly served as liaison to the Assembly of International Students, agrees that the quota should be expanded.

“The argument that internationals are taking American jobs is invalid,” Menon said, adding that qualified internationals are occupying positions in engineering and technology that would otherwise go unfilled.

While she is a proponent for an expanded H-1B quota, Tse said “[she’s] sure there are reasons for the U.S. government to have the quota where it stands.”

Tse views the lottery system as “the fairest way to go about this issue, at least for now.”

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