On April 5, 2019, United States Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) announced it had received a sufficient number of
H-1B petitions to meet its annual H-1B cap for the 2020 fiscal year
(FY2020), 201,011 in total, for 85,000 available visas. In
comparison, for FY2019, USCIS received 190,098. USCIS assigns visas
via a lottery system that is weighted toward individuals with a
U.S. master's degree. Similarly, the annual cap for H-2B visas
is 66,000, which are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis,
with up to 33,000 available for the first half of the fiscal year
and the remaining 33,000 held for the second half. The Department
of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor (DOL) recently
published a temporary final rule to issue 30,000 additional H-2B
visas through the end of FY2019. The additional 30,000, however,
"are available only to American businesses which attest that
they will likely suffer irreparable harm without the ability to
employ all the
