And as the final bell rang...

At 2.53am UK time, on the 4th April 2008, I finally got the email I had been waiting for, that my California sponsor had received the deficiency letter from the California State Board of Pharmacy, and that they had duly filed the petitions for me, in two neighbouring counties in California, thus giving me a total of 3 H1B applications going in to the lottery. Ok, so lets talk about the lottery a bit more. What do we know about it? Well, last year, there was a total number of 65,000 H1B's, of which 58,200 were genuinely available, and 6,800 visas were set aside during the fiscal year for the H-1B1 program under the terms of the legislation implementing the U.S.-Chile and U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreements. Unused numbers in this pool can be made available for H-1B use with start dates beginning on October 1, 2007, the start of FY 2008. USCIS has added 5,800, the projected number of unused H-1B1 Chile/Singapore visas to the FY 2008 H-1B cap. Ok, I don't know what that means either, but it comes from a page on the USCIS website here. What's more interesting, and easier to understand, from the same link (here) is that in 2007 the H1B quota was filled on Monday April 2nd. So when the last post, this year, is received on the 5th working day of April, one would assume it will be well over the limit, but I cannot find any reliable information that states by how much it was over-applied last year. The nearest I have seen is from here and says:

USCIS reportedly received a record number of H-1B filings – 150,000 as of the afternoon of Monday, April 2 2007, far in excess of available numbers. Accordingly, a significant percentage of filed cases will not be selected in the lottery. Cap-subject H-1B petitions that are not randomly selected are to be rejected and returned along with the filing fees. Cap-subject H-1B petitions that are received by USCIS after April 3, 2007 will also be rejected and returned. USCIS has indicated that, due to the large volume of filings, it will be several weeks before the cap selection process can be completed.

Obviously it is slightly different this year as they are definitely keeping the doors open until the 5th working day of April, but beyond that I would imagine numbers would be similar. So what would anyone like to guess at? 200,000 or maybe 250,000 for the 65,000 (or is it 58,200?) places? {These figures are corrected later as the information came out} I can also see from the above that rejected applications have their filing fees returned, so I can see why some companies are filing multiple applications {this facility was changed by law before the April 2008 Lottery took place so that multiple filings did not get their fees returned}. On the other hand, there are further plans (repeat PLANS) to increase or somehow change the quota next year, that might make it a bit easier to get an H1B (I will report more if I read anything for sure). Ok, so lets say 200,000 H1B's are applied for. How many of those are for people like myself with multiple entries? I have 3 applications and I can only accept one place. I know other pharmacists that have multiple applications. Have the financial services boys cottoned on? Have the lawyers and doctors realised too? Are there actually only 65,000 applications, but the system has spooked everyone into playing silly games? Maybe not, but I can tell you there are a lot less people applying than the "total" number of applications put in! Next, and this is pure conjecture on my part so don't take my word for it, but I don't believe the randomised lottery is totally ransomised. I have thought this through and I am absolutely certain that the first thing that USCIS do is divide the entrants in to their professions. Otherwise, with a truly random lottery, you might get years where everyone who gets a job is in the I.T. industry and not a single pharmacist got through. So divide the entrants in to careers first. What about area? Is it any good if 65,000 people turn up in New York City on October 1st and the rest of the country is drained of all their professional needs? No, I don't think so. So career, and area, and then what about those that are fast tracked compared to those that aren't? We know the net result of the extra fee is that the fast-tracked applications are replied to quickly, but are they the sole pool for the first round draw? Hmmm....tough one this, but I'm going to say, for fairness, that I think that the total number of fast tracked successful candidates is approximately equal to the number of slow-tracked applicants. So if there were 100 applicants for 20 places, and 50 were fast-tracked and 50 were not, then I think that 10 places would go to the fast track and 10 to the slow. But who knows? -- Interlude: I now completely disagree with myself, and think that this lottery is 100% totally random, from the entire pooled petitions, however crazy that may be! -- I've read a website that clearly states that no one knows, because visa data isn't shared. It does say the LCA (Labour Conditions Applications) data are shared, but that this can only be used as a rough guide towards H1B applications, and in no way a precise marker. The absolutely best piece of evidence I have seen from anywhere on the web is from informationweek.com which really breaks it down well. However, it does a lot more than that. It list all 29,000 odd companies that got visa's, and guess how well pharmacy fares? Well, I wouldn't call it a total disaster, but I would say bloody awful. Almost all of the top 100 are institutions of one kind or another, or in the I.T. game. Here's the overall top dozen H1B companies: INFOSYS TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED 4,559 visas WIPRO LIMITED 2,567 visas SATYAM COMPUTER SERVICES LTD 1,396 visas COGNIZANT TECH SOLUTIONS US CORP 962 visas MICROSOFT CORP 959 visas TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LIMITED 797 visas PATNI COMPUTER SYSTEMS INC 477 visas US TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES LLC 416 visas I-FLEX SOLUTIONS INC 374 visas INTEL CORPORATION 369 visas ACCENTURE LLP 331 visas CISCO SYSTEMS INC 324 visas The highest ranking pharmacy companies that I could find were: RITE AID CORPORATION 107 visas WALGREEN CO 65 visas ECKERD 41 visas WAL-MART 31 visas CVS 25 visas NEW ALBERTSONS/SUPERVALU 21 visas LONGS DRUG STORES 16 visas SEARS (KMART) 12 visas SAFEWAY INC 8 visas THE KROGER CO 4 visas DUANE READE 3 visas PUBLIX SUPER MARKETS INC 3 visas TARGET 1 visa COSTCO 1 visa And there's no certainty that these were all for pharmacy positions of course! --interlude: The above numbers apparently aren't just for, err, let us call them "new" H1B applications. I believe the statistics merge "new" applications with those that have reached maturity and are being extended - let's call those "old" H1B's. There's no breakdown whatsoever beyond the grand total, so there's no telling how many are old and how many are new, but I don't believe that the extended "old" H1B's affect the actual 65,000 limit for the "new" one's. -- My search was very quick, but I think we're talking about hardly a great number of pharmacists getting through the H1B lottery compared to I.T. workers, and that realistically those thousands of pharmacists each year sitting the FPGEE exam, who don't have a green card already, might be better off looking for a non-profit entry (hospital, university, charity?) into an H1B than keeping their fingers crossed on the current "normal" H1B system. Very very worrying indeed. One last thing before I call it a night. I am well aware now that even some of the most well known pharmacy companies are double-sponsoring their candidates, and paying to have them fast-tracked; but I am also well aware that some of them don't and some of them ask the candidates to pay the extra $1,000.00 fee to have their application fast-tracked should they so desire. Well, that's fair enough, if that's how they want to play it, but I have my suspisions about the benefit of fast tracking. I think it may actually (slightly) reduce your chances of getting an H1B. Going back to my analogy above, with 100 applications for 20 place, 10 of which go to the fast-track group of 50 people and 10 to the slow-tracked group of 50. I think, if you call that "round 1", then 40 fast-tracked people are given a letter saying "better luck next year", whilst the 40 slow-tracked are still in the drawer. Once the 20 who were lucky enough to get an offer have thought replied, it might be that 3 were given to the same person, 1 dies, 2 win the lottery and one got married and doesn't want to go to the USA any more. So perhaps 7 places are re-allocated, but only to the remaining 40 in the slow-tracked group. Second round goes to a third round, and a third round to a fourth before all 20 places are finally taken up, but now the stats are completely in favour of the slow-tracked group who got to eat the left-overs so to speak! Am I right? I have no idea, but it sure sounds plausible to me. Well, that's the update over for the moment, the next entry should be, if I'm right about the fast-track time frame, a posting before the end of April to say how my fast-tracked applications have done. Good luck to everyone, Farmacyst