Et enfin voici une copie du rapport du DHS sur cette mesure pour ceux qui parle anglais :
" During his or her authorized period of stay, a qualified F-l student may receive a change
of nonimmigrant status to H-1B nonimmigrant status if an employer has timely filed, and USCIS
grants, a petition on behalf of that student. The employer must submit a Form 1-129, Petition for
a Nonimmigrant Worker to USCIS. The Form includes a section for the employer to indicate
whether change of status is being requested for the beneficiary (if eligible), or whether the
beneficiary will instead apply for a visa outside of the United States at a U.S. consulate. USCIS
may grant H-1B status to eligible nonirnmigrants employed in or offered a job by the petitioner
in a specialty occupation. 8 CFR 214.2(h)(l)(ii)(B). A specialty occupation is one that requires
the theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge and a bachelor's or
higher degree in the specific specialty as a minimum qualification. INA Section 214(i).
Congress, however, has prohibited USCIS h m granting H-IB status to more than
65,000 nonimmigrant aliens during any fiscal year (referred to as the "capv).
The H-1B category is greatly oversubscribed. When USCIS determines that the cap will
be reached for that fiscal year, based on the number of H-1B petitions received, it announces to
the public the final day on which USCIS will accept such petitions for adjudication in that fiscal
year. USCIS refers to this day as the "final receipt date." &g 8 CFR 214,2@)(8)(ii)(B). USCIS
then randomly selects from among the petitions received on the final receipt date the number of
petitions necessary to reach the 65,000 cap. Id. If the final receipt date falls within the first five
business days on which petitions subject to the applicable cap may be filed, USCIS will
randomly select the number of petitions necessary to reach the 65,000 cap from among those
filed during the acceptance period.
There is a significant amount of competition amon&employers of highly-skilled workers
for the limited number of H-1B visas available each fiscal year. Each year, the cap has been
reached earlier in the year. For W05, the cap was reached on October 1,2004, the first day of
that fiscal year. In FY06, the cap was reached on August 10,2005; and in FY 07, the cap was
reached on May 26,2006. Last year, the cap was reached on April 2,2007, the first business day
for filing. On that single day, USCIS received more than twice the number of petitions needed to
reach the cap for that fiscal year.
Many employers who hire F-1 students under the OPT program eventually file a petition
on the students' behalf for classification as an H-1B worker in a specialty occupation. If the
student is maintaining his or her F-1 nonimmigrant status, the employer may also include a
request to have the student's nonimmigrant status changed to H-IB. Because the H-1B category
is greatly oversubscribed, however, OPT employees often are unable to obtain H-1B status
within their authorized period of stay in F-1 status, including the 12-month OPT period, and thus
are forced to leave the country. The inability of U.S. employers, in particular in the fields of
science, technology, engineering and mathematics, to obtain H-1B status for highly skilled
foreign students and foreign nonirnrnigrant workers has adversely affected the ability of U.S.
employers to remit and retain skilled workers and creates a competitive disadvantage for U.S.
companies.
DHS has received communications from a wide range of concerned stakeholders,
including companies in the high-tech industry, members of Congress, and U.S. educational
institutions, about the adverse impact on the U.S. economy and the ability of U.S. schools to
attract talented foreign students for STEM study programs due to the immigration and
employment practices in the United States. Representatives of high-tech industries in particular
have raised significant concerns that the inability of U.S. companies to obtain H-IB visas for
qualified F-1 students in a timely manner continues to result in the loss of skilled technical
workers to countries with more lenient employment visa regimes, such as Canada and Australia.
-See T estimony of Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation, before the U.S. Senate
Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, "Strengthening American Competitiveness
for the 21st Century1' (Washington, D.C.; March 7,2007)
This interim final rule addresses the immediate competitive disadvantage faced by U.S.
high-tech industries, and thus may quickly ameliorate some of the adverse impacts on the U.S.
economy. It does this by allowing an F-1 student already in a period of approved postcompletion
OPT to apply to extend that period by up to 17 months (for a maximum total period
of 29 months of OPT) if the student received a STEM degree. As discussed in Section I1 below,
this extension is only available to F-1 students with STEM degrees who have accepted employment with an employer registered and in good standing with USCIS' E-Verify
employment verification program. In addition, employers of F-1 students who qualify for this
17-month extension of post-completion OPT must report to the student's school DSO within 48
hours if the student's employment ends prior to the end of the student's authorized OPT
employment period.
"