Immigration Law

USCIS Announces H-1B Cap Reached

Immigration Services announced this afternoon that the H-1B cap has been reached for this year. USCIS began accepting H-1B visa petitions on April 2, 2007, and has stated that they have already received over 150,000 petitions.

Each year, the U.S. government makes 65,000 H-1B visas available to qualified individuals on a first-come basis. The cap has been reached every year for the last several years, although the cap has never been reached on the first day of filing.

USCIS must now perform data entry on all of the visa petitions received on April 2. Once this is completed, the petitions will be subjected to a computer-generated random selection process to determine which petitions will be counted towards the cap. Petitions which are rejected will be returned.

The lottery itself, and the results of the lottery, will not be disclosed to the public for some time because of the high number of filings. The announcement from USCIS does not come as a complete surprise. Immigration attorneys have been predicting for some time that the H-1B cap would be reached on the first day of filing.

H-1B visas are a relatively swift path to work in the U.S. for foreigners with bachelor's degrees and with U.S. companies to sponsor them. Immigrants, along with the U.S. technology industry lobby, have been advocating for an increase in the H-1B quota to reform the visa program. A current bill under review proposed raising the H-1B visa cap from 65,000 to 115,000.

If you would like more information regarding the H-1B visa cap, please read the announcement issued by USCIS.

From Immigration-Law-Answers-Blog posted 2007-04-03.