Every year the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) and USPED (United States Public Education Department) change policies to reflect new requirements needed when hiring foreign teachers and professionals to work in the United States. Every fiscal year, only 65,000 H-1B visas are granted for approval for the employment of teachers and other professionals. Agencies still has to compete with high-tech companies who most of the time seek H-1B visas for their high-skilled employees. Since Immigration Services begin their fiscal year in October, and with only 65,000 H-1B visas available, it is a normal occurrence that the visas are already exhausted six weeks before they are made available. Moreover, the early exhaustion of H-1B visas presents a problem for teachers as classes for most schools begin in August or September. Thus, unless the applicant fell into one of the exceptions, there were no H-1B visas available for the majority of the 2008-2009 school year. Since the next H-1B start date is October 1, 2009 employers may begin to apply for those numbers as early as six months before the intended start date, April 1, 2009.
The unique problem that the H-1B issue presents to teacher recruiters is that it is possible that they may not have all of their teachers recruited by April 1 in order to have a start date of October 1. Furthermore, since school begins in August or September, recruiters aim to have their classrooms staffed with full time teachers instead having to use long-term substitutes, if they can avoid it. Therefore, until Congress allocates more H-1B visa numbers, giving teacher recruiters a little more time to recruit foreign teachers before the visa numbers are exhausted, teacher recruiters may still find themselves in a bind.
The solution to solve this problem, is to require the school districts to provide an Affiliation with an Institution of Higher Education which exempt application of H-1B visa from the current limit of 65,000 allowing the hiring of teachers to proceed.
Since most of the schools we work with are affiliated to a local university, non-profit organizations, non-profit research organizations and or government research organizations, this gives us the unique opportunity to use this exception to the visa cap of 65,000 and avoid competing with other companies for limited visa or wait for the next fiscal year.
Since most of the schools we work with are affiliated to a local university, non-profit organizations, non-profit research organizations and or government research organizations, this gives us the unique opportunity to use this exception to the visa cap of 65,000 and avoid competing with other companies for limited visa or wait for the next fiscal year.
