An H-1B visa is a temporary work visa. The H-1B nonimmigrant visa may be issued to individuals who seek temporary entry in a specialty occupation as a professional. Some examples of "specialty occupations" include accountant, computer analyst, engineer, financial analyst, scientist, architect or lawyer. The petition can be approved with a combination of college or university course work plus three years work experience for each year of university education missing. Together this would be deemed equivalent to a four-year bachelor's degree.

These temporary workers got H-1B temporary visas to work in the United States for a maximum of 6 years. During these 6 years, these workers had a chance to apply for permanent residence in the United States.

While the boom of the 90's is mostly over and we're back to reality, there are still a lot of temporary workers in the U.S. IT industry. Some of our staff used to be immigrant workers and we know that some of you (our visitors) are as well.