Bangalore: This year’s April Fool’s day kept Indian techies busy since it was this day that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration services (USCIS) had chosen to start accepting petitions for work permit H1B visas for the next fiscal year. This is something that a large number of IT professionals in India depend on to a great extent.

The programme for H-1B non- immigrant visas was introduced in 1990. This is where workers out of the U.S. possessing the required skills and knowledge are employed by U.S. companies on a temporary basis. Applicants need a bachelor degree in their preferred field, where successful applicants are sponsored by employers.

In 2012, 130,000 H category visas were issued by the U.S. authorities in India. However, the number of H-1B applications has been declining for the last couple of years. It was only a few months after June that the quota began to fill up. Yet the quota, according to industry experts, will take a week to fill up. Visas will be allotted through a lottery system. This lottery system was earlier followed by a large number of applications and the quota would get filled in just one week.

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