The U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS)
announced on Jan. 27, 2011, that it had received a sufficient
number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap for fiscal year
2011. USCIS announced that Jan. 26, 2011, was the final day it
accepted H-1B petitions that requested an employment start date in
fiscal year 2011, which ends Sept. 30, 2011. As H-1B petitions can
be filed six months in advance of the start date, USCIS will begin
on April 1, 2011, to accept H-1B petitions requesting fiscal year
2012 employment start dates.
The number of H-1B visas that can be issued for new employment
in any federal fiscal year is currently capped at 58,200, plus any
of the 6,800 H-1B1 visas set aside for Chilean and Singaporean
citizens not used during the prior fiscal year. For fiscal year
2011, 6,350 unused H-1B1 visa numbers were added to the total,
which brought it to 64,550. In addition, 20,000 H-1B petitions for
foreign nationals with U.S.-earned master's or higher
