WASHINGTON, April 2: US companies flooded the government with visa applications for highly skilled foreign workers on Tuesday in what has become an annual lottery for just 65,000 visas.

The government did not release any figures, but experts said they expected about 200,000 applications, more than three times the number available, on the first day the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting the petitions for the fiscal year starting Oct 1.

The US government was overwhelmed last year with about 120,000 applications on the first day that applications were accepted for H-1B visas, leaving many candidates out of luck.

The competition is for H-1B visas, which allow US companies to employ foreign guest workers in highly skilled jobs for three years. The visas can be extended for an additional three years.

“The people we’ve offered jobs to are really subject to the whims of a lottery,” said Jack Krumholtz, managing director of federal government affairs for Microsoft Corp.

The USCIS closed the application window after two days and pooled the petitions, granting the visas by a computerised lottery system.

Companies who specialise in science, engineering and technology say the current system is a Catch 22: the United States is not producing enough homegrown job candidates and bars companies from bringing them in.

“Getting this right is important for the US to maintain competitiveness,” Krumholtz said. “It goes to our economic well-being.”

The National Association of Manufacturers called for “a permanent fix” to address the need for highly skilled employees in manufacturing and other sectors.

There wasn’t always such a mismatch in supply and demand.

In 2000, the quota for H-1B visas was raised to 195,000 per year and was rarely reached, but when the tech boom collapsed, the quota was reduced to 65,000.—Reuters