USCIS Announces H-1B Cap Reached
D.Ray Mantle, April 8, 2008
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that the annual limit of new H-1B visa numbers have been used up. Petitions filed by April 7, 2008, will be included in a random selection process. The first round will include only those applicants who earned Master's degrees from U.S. universities. Once these 20,000 applicants are selected, the remaining petitions will be included in a second round of random selection for the 65,000 regular H-1B numbers. Now that the H-1B cap has been reached, find out what other options may be available to you by contacting our office.
The news release is detailed below:
Office of Communications
USCIS Update
USCIS REACHES FY 2009 H-1B CAP
WASHINGTON – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it has received enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally mandated cap for fiscal year 2009. USCIS has also received more than 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of persons exempt from the cap under the “advanced degree” exemption. Before running the random selection process, USCIS will complete initial data entry for all filings received during the filing period ending on April 7, 2008. Due to the high number of petitions, USCIS is not yet able to announce the precise day on which it will conduct the random selection process.
USCIS will carry out the computer-generated random selection process for all cap-subject petitions received. USCIS will select the number of petitions needed to meet the caps of 65,000 for the general category and 20,000 under the “advanced degree” exemption limit. USCIS will reject, and return filing fees for all cap-subject petitions not randomly selected, unless found to be a duplicate. USCIS will handle duplicate filings in accordance with the interim final rule published on March 24, 2008 in the Federal Register.
The agency will conduct the selection process for “advanced degree” exemption petitions first. All “advanced degree” petitions not selected will be part of the random selection process for the 65,000 limit.
– USCIS –