After Decline, US H-1B Visa Touches Congress-Mandated Cap of 65,000
Registering a decline in earlier in the year, applications for US H-1B visas for highly skilled workers coveted by Indian professionals have finally touched the Congress-mandated cap of 65,000 after a sudden spurt in past few months.
According to an announcement of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a good number of professionals have applied for the visas to reach the mandated cap of 65,000 for working professionals for the fiscal ending on September 30, 2010.
“USCIS is hereby notifying the public that December 21, 2009 is the final receipt date for new H-1B speciality occupation petitions requesting an employment start date in FY 2010,” an official media release said.
In past years, the cap was reached within a couple of days of the USCIS starting to accept H-1B petitions on April 1, but this year it had received only 45,000 application till the middle of May.
Thereafter it took nearly seven months to fill the rest of the 20,000 slots, a sizeable number of which, in fact, were received in the last few weeks.
USCIS has also received more than 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of persons exempt from the cap under the ‘advanced degree’ exemption.
