H-1B cap for fiscal 2008 reached in two days

By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- Electronic News, 4/4/2007

Only one day after starting the receipt of applications, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced Tuesday that it had already received enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally mandated cap for fiscal year 2008. Contrastingly, it took nearly two months for the cap to be reached for fiscal year 2007.

As of late Monday afternoon, USCIS said it had received approximately 150,000 cap-subject H-1B petitions. USCIS said it will use a random selection process for all cap-subject filings received on April 2 and April 3. USCIS said it will reject and return along with filing fees all petitions received on those days that are not randomly selected.

In light of the high volume of filings, USCIS said it will not be able to conduct the random selection for several weeks.

Those who have been rejected will have no choice but to wait another year. Petitioners may re-submit petitions on April 1, 2008 when H-1B visas become available for FY 2009, USCIS said. This is also the earliest date for which an employer may file a petition requesting FY 2009 H-1B employment with a start date of October 1, 2008.

The USCIS' news this week is sure to add fuel to the fire of recent calls for a major changes in the allocation of high-tech worker visas. Last month, Bill Gates appeared before Congress asking for an increase in the number of annually allotted H-1B visas. For its part, the industry group IEEE-USA has repeatedly made public appeals for the U.S. government to correct what the IEEE has called "major flaws" with the current visa program—but has maintained that before Congress considers raising the H-1B cap, it should give the Labor Department broader enforcement authority to investigate claims of workplace and wage abuse.