Employers seeking to sponsor H-1B workers for fiscal year 2020
can begin filing petitions on April 1, 2019, for a start date of
October 1, 2019. The H-1B visa is used by businesses that want to
employ foreign nationals to work in a specialty occupation
requiring theoretical or technical expertise. For FY 2020, cases
will be considered accepted on the date the U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services (USCIS) takes possession of the petition, not
on the date the petition was postmarked.
Annual Limit
There is an annual limit of 65,000 visas available for H-1B
petitions, with an additional 20,000 reserved for individuals who
have earned a U.S. master's degree or higher. For FY 2019,
USCIS received over 190,000 petitions and accepted petitions for
the first five business days before announcing that it had received
a sufficient number of H-1B petitions and that the cap was closed.
This year, an even greater number of petitions is expected. We
therefore encourage all
