USCIS Reaches Year 2008 Limit for Cap-Exempt H-1B

United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it has received enough H-1B petitions from foreign nationals who received graduate education in the U.S. to meet the Fiscal Year 2008 congressionally mandated exemption limit of 20,000. The final receipt date for these exempt H-1B petitions was April 30, 2007.

US Businesses use the H-1B program to recruit foreign workers in speciality occupation that require theoretical or technical expertise in speciality fields, like scientists, engineers or computer programmers.

All H-1B petitions that requested the exemption and were received on April 30 will be subjected to a computer generated random selection process. All filings not selected in this process will be rejected and returned to the petitioner, along with the filing fee(s), as long as that petition is not eligible for another H-1B cap exemption. All H-1B petitions requesting this exemption for FY 2008 that were or will be received on or after May 1, 2007 will be rejected by USCIS and returned to the petitioner, along with the filing fee(s), as long as that petition is not eligible for another H-1B cap exemption.

Note that the earliest one may file a petition for either a cap-subject FY 2009 H-1B employee or a cap-exempt petitioner, for a start date of October 1, 2008, will be April 1, 2008. Until then, you will not be able to submit any H-1B petitions for cap-subject petitioners or this particular cap-exempt category of petitioner.

USCIS will, however, continue to accept and adjudicate petitions for current H-1B workers in the following cases: o To change the terms of employment for a current H-1B worker. o To extend the amount of time a current H-1B worker can remain in the United States. o To allow a current H-1B worker to change employers. o To allow a current H-1B worker to work, at the same time, in a second H-1B position.