1,50,000 H1- B visa applications on day 1

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it has received enough H-1B petitions to meet the cap of 65,000 for fiscal year 2007-08.

This is the first time that the cap is reached on the first day of receiving the applications on April 2. Last year, the H1- B visa applications took two months before the cap was reached on May 26.

In 2005, the visa numbers lasted till September. There was not much demand for the visa in the first three months in 2005. People who want to file regular H1- B visas have to wait till April next year, unless the Congress increases the numbers in the immigration bill now under its consideration.

USCIS will use a random selection process for all cap-subject filings received on April 2 and April 3, this year. 

USCIS will reject and return along with filing fee all the petitions received on those days that are not randomly selected.

Those who submitted their applications should wait for a few more days to know if their application was accepted or rejected.

The selected persons can start working beginning October 1, 2008. USCIS will reject all cap-subject H-1B petitions received on or after April 4. As of April 2, USCIS had received approximately 150,000 cap-subject H-1B

petitions.

USCIS will do the initial data entry for all filings received on April 2 and April 3 prior to conducting the random selection process.

In light of the high volume of filings, USCIS will not be able to conduct the random selection for several weeks. In order to fully utilise its data entry and initial processing capacity, USCIS may choose to distribute filings received at one service center to other service centers for data entry.

In the event that USCIS exercises this option, petitioners may receive receipt notices or other correspondence from a service centre other than the one to which the H-1B submission was sent.

USCIS advises employers that there is no need for concern and there is no need to contact USCIS. There are visa numbers available for those earned masters or higher degrees. The quota for them is set as 20,000 which is yet to be reached.