US says speeding up visas for researchers

3 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States is speeding up visa applications for researchers and graduate students, an official said Thursday, hoping to ease a long backlog that raised fears that scientists would head elsewhere.

The State Department has added staff and made procedural changes and now expects to process researcher visas in around two weeks, said David Donahue, the deputy assistant secretary of state for consular affairs.

"We think that we're the best place to do this kind of work. We're cutting edge," Donahue told AFP. "We want people to feel comfortable about coming here."

The United States last year issued around 56,000 such visas for graduate students in high-tech fields, scientists at research laboratories and scholars attending academic conferences, Donahue said.

But the United States sometimes took months last year to issue the visas, of which Indians and Chinese are major recipients.

Donahue blamed the backlog on a staffing shortage and a spike in applications.

US universities -- where foreign students often account for a large number of spots in graduate programs -- had voiced concern, fearing that students would turn to other countries due to the hassle of obtaining US visas.

The efforts to clear the backlog come ahead of an initiative this month by US President Barack Obama to reform the immigration system. Obama is expected to look for ways for undocumented workers to legalize their status.

Amid the recession, some US lawmakers have been lobbying to give fewer so-called H-1B visas, which go to full-time workers in high-tech fields.

Companies can seek up to 85,000 H-1B visas for their workers in the fiscal year starting in October. Asians usually get some three-quarters of the visas, with Indians alone taking one-quarter.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hZoV0d-RcwKlxgCgypTGLnfDT4ew

More of the same...

and lowering wages at the same time.

our education system is far behind that of countries like India - at least when it comes to their top schools. I will hire the top graduates from India any day over an American with a C average.

"The problem extends even to India's much-hyped engineering graduates, who have been the backbone of the country's booming outsourcing industry in the past decade.
Every year, India produces about 650,000 engineers. But Pratik Kumar, executive vice president for human resources at the information-technology and outsourcing giant Wipro, says his company considers fewer than a quarter of them employable."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/02/AR2009050200702.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Speaks volumes coming from Wipro.

You must want to pay jack-shit if you can't find an American.

Give me your requirements and a job description and we can find someone on this board to fill it.

If our universities are so far behind those of India... why are so many trying to get into our schools?

Post your position requirements that you can't find an American grad to fill... I bet you would find one here...



...expecting to hear only the sound of crickets, I know your type.

... this is about academic/knowledge exchange, in the true spirit of the H1Bs, not in the spirit of whatever way they may have been abused by US companies.

It is true that US research has lost many good people from e.g. China who were held up by a month-long visa waiting period, sometimes such that the funding for their US project had already expired. I know of several cases next door to my office.

Streamlining that is a good thing.

The issue of H1B abuse is completely separate from streamlining the visa process. We need to invite excellent people and want their visa to be issued in a timely manner.

Is about research and graduate students. It is not about a H-1B visa.

But keep on connecting them.

However, H-1B's were brought up in the article, as well as on this thread.

But it seems like someone, or group, wants to misdirect the objective. Perhaps it is the publisher or....
The objective to me seems like opening up the research area to the world.

??

who are you trying to blame here... the OP?

FYI- The Author of the Editorial is not on this thread!