Random Visa Lottery is No Way to Run a Business or a Visa Program

Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will receive a flood of H-1B visa petitions on Tuesday, April 1, 2008, and is expected to announce within days that the FY 2009 allotment of visas for highly educated foreign-born professionals has been exceeded – with visa “winners” once again determined by random lottery.

“Congressional inaction has brought us to a repeat of last year’s H-1B visa lottery fiasco,” said Robert Hoffman, Vice President for Government and Public Affairs at Oracle and Co-Chair of Compete America. “For the second consecutive year, U.S. companies and research institutions will be forced to put plans on-hold as they wait for a random lottery to determine who gets to hire the scientists and engineers they need. It’s no way to run a business, or a visa program.”

The anticipated announcement by USCIS will mark the fifth consecutive year that the cap has been reached on or before the beginning of the new fiscal year, and the second year in a row that the cap has been reached on the very first day petitions are accepted. Compounding the problem are the massive, multi-year backlogs in the employment-based green card system, which prevent U.S. employers from retaining many key employees as permanent workers once their temporary status expires.

“Despite the well-documented demand for H-1B visas and employment-based green cards, artificially low visa caps continue to shut out some of the world’s brightest talent, adversely impacting America’s long-term competitiveness,” stated Hoffman. “We are shutting the door on talent that can help keep and create jobs here in America.”

To focus attention on the broken H-1B visa system, Compete America today released its own version of the lottery, with scratch-off lottery tickets that will be distributed to all Members of Congress. Visit www.competeamerica.org to view the tickets.

Compete America (www.competeamerica.org) is a coalition of corporations, educators, research institutions and trade associations concerned about legal, employment-based immigration and committed to ensuring that the United States has the highly educated workforce necessary to ensure continued innovation, job creation and leadership in a worldwide economy.

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