Archive for April 8th, 2011

USCIS Announces that it Continues to Accept Fiscal Year 2012 H-1B Petitions

Henry Chang | April 8, 2011 in United States Immigration | Comments (0)

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) announced today that it continues to accept H-1B petitions for the 2012 Fiscal Year, which begins on October 1, 2011 and ends September 30, 2012. Because H-1B petitions may only be filed up to six months before the proposed start date, employers began submitting H-1B petitions for Fiscal Year 2012 on April 1, 2011.

U.S. businesses use the H-1B program to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields, such as scientists, engineers, or computer programmers. The current annual cap on the H-1B category is 65,000. However, some petitions are exempt from the cap under the advanced degree exemption provided to the first 20,000 petitions filed for a beneficiary who has obtained a U.S. master’s degree or higher. Others are completely exempt from the numerical limits.

According to the USCIS announcement, it has received approximately 5,900 H-1B petitions counting toward the 65,000 cap, and approximately 4,500 petitions toward the 20,000 cap exemption for individuals with advanced degrees. For now, there continue to be large numbers of H-1B numbers available under both caps.

Please note that up to 6,800 H-1B numbers may be set aside from the cap of 65,000 during each fiscal year for the H-1B1 program under the terms of the legislation implementing the U.S.-Chile and U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreements. Unused numbers in this pool are made available for H-1B use for the next fiscal year.

For further information regarding the H-1B category, please review our H-1B article, which is available here.