Less than 800 H-1Bs Available!

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

As of December 15, 2009, approximately 64,200 have been reported received by the United States Citizenship & Immigration Service (USCIS).   The additional 20,000 cap for qualifying petitioners with an advanced degree from a U.S. university was reached earlier this year. 

USCIS will continue to accept both cap-subject petitions and advanced degree petitions from the 65,000 cap until a sufficient number of H-1B petitions have been received to reach the statutory limits, taking into account the fact that some of these petitions may be denied, revoked, or withdrawn.  However, on the day USCIS determines that sufficient petitions have been received, pursuant to 8 CFR § 214.2(h)(8)(ii), USCIS will conduct a random selection lottery from among petitions from those received on that day to detrmine which petitions will be accepted for processing.

Because of the recent increase in demand and the low availability at this time, employers should not delay preparing and filing H-1B petitions; the cap can be reached at any moment.

Contact us now to assist you in filing your H-1B petition(s).  We can help you (1) file a timely cap subject petition while those visas are still available, (2) determine which employers are exempt from the H-1B cap, (3) determine which petitions may be filed regardless of the H-1B cap, and (4) file H-1B petitions that we determine are not subject to the H-1B cap.  

As a reminder, H-1B petitions may be filed for full-time as well as part-time employees.  During a healthy economy, H-1B petitions are hard to come by.  Thus, rather than waiting until next year, it is advisable that H-1B petitions be filed now for foreign students who are working via Optional Practical Training (OPT) to prevent a situation where their OPT expires in the midst of a year when H-1B petitions are harder to come by.

FY 2010 Cap Count History

There are 65,000 general cap-subject H-1B petitions available for this 2010 fiscal year (October 1, 2009 through September 30, 2010).  USCIS confirmed that demand for visas under the Chile and Singapore provisions has been very small this year. USCIS has, for several years, estimated the demand for Chile/Singapore visas, and has set aside that estimated number. The remaining number of visas that are set aside for Chile and Singapore (from maximums of 1,400 for nationals of Chile and 5,400 for nationals of Singapore) are returned to the “general” H-1B pool, and USCIS accepts petitions up to a number that includes an estimate of the number of Chile and Singapore visas that will go unused. Thus, though the Chile/Singapore set aside reduces initially the H-1B cap from 65,000 to 58,200, in reality, some number of thousand unused Chile/Singapore visas are added back in, bringing the number of H-1B visas generally available well above 58,200. That is why, according to the latest H-1B cap count, the number, 64,200, exceeds 58,200.

Under federal law, USCIS began accepting H-1B petitions on April 1, 2009, six months prior to the October 1, 2009 start of the 2010 Fiscal Year.  Within the first five business days in April, USCIS received almost half the petitions needed to meet the the cap and has received just short of the 20,000 needed to reach the master’s cap. 

In contrast, as the annual pattern shows for most recent years, employers have filed more H-1B petitions than could be accepted under the annual cap.  In Fiscal Year 1997, the cap of 65,000 was reached prior to the end of the fiscal year for the first time.  In 2004, the cap was reach in 10 months; in 2005 in only 6 months; in 2006 in only 4 months; and in 2007 in only 2 months.  In fiscal years 2008 and 2009, the cap was reached on the first day that they became available resulting in a random lottery for the entirety of available H-1B visas. 

Although off to a slow start in the first six months since USCIS began accepting 2010 H-1B petitions, there was a surge in receipts reported received by USCIS in November2009, including approximately 2000 received in the days before Thanksgiving.  With the economy improving in the months since October, the numbers of available H-1B visas under the cap have shown a corresponding decline reflecting an increase in new hires by U.S. employers.  

Below is a historical look back at the numbers received from the general cap of 65,000 this past year.

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