All it takes to get a visa

“I’ve invested so much money into my degree, I should be given a fair chance to work here for some time,” said Akbar Hajiani, 28, a graphic artist from India who recently earned his bachelor’s degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has been working for a Virginia graphic and production design company under a one-year extension of his student visa, and the company plans to apply for an H-1B to keep him in the US.

Gates cited a recent study that estimated 140,000 jobs are vacant at Standard & Poor’s 500 companies and that for each H-1B visa requested, technology companies hire five additional employees.

With little hope for more visas for the upcoming year, US officials have closed the duplicate application loophole. The immigration service received at least 500 duplicate applications last year, said spokesman Peter Vietti. This time, companies will forfeit the filing fees for any they submit.

“If I were a Fortune 500 company and I wanted to make certain that one of my workers — or how about several — were able to obtain an H-1B, it would be a drop in the bucket for me to file 15 to 20 applications on behalf of one person to put the numbers in my favor,” he said.

Last year, some companies waited until June to apply, after prospective employees earned their degrees. But the visas were long gone by then. Intel doesn’t take any chances. When it finds a doctoral student it wants to hire, it files the application early under the applicant’s earlier degrees.

Intel expects to submit about 400 applications, said Jenifer Verdery, the company’s director of workforce policy. Last year a majority of its applicants received visas. This year is anybody’s guess. “We could get all or none,” she said.

Immigration policies

In 2007, the Senate failed to pass a Bill that sought to make changes to border security, work-site enforcement and a guest-worker program. It also would have allowed illegal immigrants to gain legal status. But this month, the House approved a Bill that would speed visa processing for foreign artists and musicians.

The Government rolled out a points-based immigration system for workers from outside the European Union, looking at education, earnings, age, command of English and other factors. The new system replaced more than 80 different ways of coming to work in Britain with five tiers and makes sure that Britain receives only the migrant workers it needs. The other changes: biometric information, citizenship tests, higher age limits for foreign brides, a new border police force.

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