The federal government’s immigration agency announced on Friday that it had already reached next year’s limit on the number of special H-1B visas available to foreign workers who have received graduate degrees from American colleges or universities. The special class of visas was created two years ago, when the supply of regular H-1B visas was quickly exhausted.
Congress acted after lobbying by industry, which said it could not fill needed jobs with American workers alone, and by colleges, which wanted to improve their graduates’ chances of employment (The Chronicle, November 23, 2004). Using a must-pass spending bill that would finance nearly the entire federal government in 2005, Congress created 20,000 more H-1B visas annually that were reserved for foreigners “who have earned a master’s degree or higher” from an American college.
