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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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The yearly limit for high-skilled worker visas was reached Monday, just two months into the new fiscal year, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) announced.
The agency said some 85,000 additional H-1B visas were allocated, including 20,000 for those with a master's degree or higher, as part of the yearly lottery, on top of the 120,000-plus already assigned earlier in the year.
The visa is primarily used by tech companies, financial institutions and universities. In 2024, Amazon, Google, Meta and other larger companies dominated the market, each receiving several thousand visas.
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"Where things stand, it is not sustainable for the companies or individuals who desire to use the H-1B program," Immigration attorney Steven Brown told Newsweek.
"If you look at the USCIS recent trends, you can see a significant delta between the demand and the amount of selected registrations."
Overall, USCIS counted 479,953 registrations, a drop from the 780,884 seen in 2024. Around 135,000 then ended up with a visa.
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Brown pointed out that, at last count, some 8 million jobs were open in the United States and said that keeping a strict limit on visas like the H-1B was not helping employers.
"Congress should increase the cap on employment-based immigration, as well as modernize our green card system, something that has not been done in decades," the Houston-based attorney said.
"For individuals, the issue becomes a lack of being able to have certainty. With a 1-in-4 chance of being selected, they often have to consider other options for work visas in the U.S."
The H-1B is one of several options immigrants have to enter the U.S. for work, and most are granted on a temporary basis. This one is for three years, with the option for an extension or to apply for permanent residency (a green card) later.
Ron Hira, a professor at Howard University who studies the H-1B program, told Newsweek in November that the program does not favor visa holders. Visa holders can be paid less than American citizens and are put in difficult positions if they are laid off.
"They only have 60 days to find another job, and they don't control the visa. They have to find somebody else who's going to sponsor them for the visa," he said. "So, you imagine someone who's desperate, in a labor market where it's really lousy because there's tens of thousands of layoffs, hundreds of thousands of layoffs, they're desperate to take any job they can.
"That gives those employers who scoop them up even more leverage over those workers. They'll take anything they can get, at any wage, any working condition that's there, to just stay in the country."
USCIS said Monday that it would now alert those who had applied but been unsuccessful while still accepting some petitions exempt from the cap, such as those applying for extensions or changing the terms of employment.
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