As many of our readers are aware, there is an artificially set number of H-1B visas available each fiscal year, 85,000 to be exact.  Of these, some are set aside for people who graduated with Masters’ degrees in the US and some are put aside for Chile and Singapore free trade agreements.  The fiscal year runs from October 1 to September 30.  Six months prior to the beginning of the fiscal year, one may submit a new (as opposed to renewal or extension) H-1B petition.  As mentioned in our blog post from earlier this year, the season only lasted about seven weeks.  Think about how few visas are available for this big country.  These are jobs that are only for professionals.  This means we’re turning away talent rather than keeping it here.  On the same note, employment based immigrant visas are backlogged in several categories.  For jobs that require education and/or experience (but something less than a Master’s degree or equivalent) there is a backlog of more than four years.  This basically means that the labor certification process is theoretically flawed.  An employer goes through a detailed process of showing that it cannot find an employee who meets certain minimum qualifications (of which of course, the foreign national possesses).  Then, after having proved this, the process is relatively on hold for four years.  The American Immigration Lawyers Association recently posted a letter to Congress from nearly one thousand businesses, schools and hospitals in the US complaining about these backlogs and shortfalls and asking for relief.  If we as a country are going to have these categories in place, should we not at least make sufficient visas available so that they can be used as intended?