Recent Developments In Immigration Law

USCIS Announces H-1B Cap Has Been Reached

As reported in our previous Alert, on April 3, 2007, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that, due to extreme demand, the H-1B cap for Fiscal Year 2008 was reached. Annually, 65,000 new H-1B visas are made available, with an additional 20,000 H-1B visas made available to holders of U.S. master's degrees or higher.

Per regulation, on April 12, 2007, USCIS conducted a random selection process to determine which petitions will be accorded an H-1B visa number among those received on April 2 and April 3, 2007. USCIS estimates that it received approximately 150,000 cap-subject H-1B petitions on April 2, the first day filings opened for FY2008. USCIS also estimates that as of April 18, 2007, of those petitions, approximately 18,000 are to be applied to the master's degree cap of 20,000, which would indicate that there still may be H-1B visa numbers available to those beneficiaries who hold a U.S. master's degree or