April 8, 2008 - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it has received enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally mandated cap for fiscal year 2009. 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. USCIS will carry out the computer-generated random selection process for all cap-subject petitions received. Additionally, filing fees for all cap-subject petitions not randomly selected will be returned, unless found to be a duplicate. Due to the high number of petitions, USCIS is not yet able to announce the precise day on which it will conduct the random selection process.

USCIS also announced that it will conduct the selection process for "advanced degree" exemption petitions first. All "advanced degree" petitions not selected will be part of the random selection process for the 65,000 limit.

BAL Comment: Employers should continue to expect delays as it may take several weeks for USCIS to complete initial data entry for all filings received, for the random selection process to be conducted, and for receipt notices to be issued. All petitions not randomly selected by USCIS will be returned to the petitioner and are eligible to be resubmitted on April 1, 2009, when additional H-1B visas become available for fiscal 2010.