April 11, 2008 - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ("USCIS") announced on April 10, 2008 that it received nearly 163,000 cap-subject H-1B petitions during the filing period that commenced on April 1, 2008 and ended on April 7, 2008. USCIS has estimated that 31,200 of those petitions were filed under the special quota reserved for beneficiaries who hold a Master's degree or higher from a U.S. university. By law, H-1B visas are capped at an annual limitation of 65,000 visas per fiscal year. This cap does not include an additional 20,000 visas available to beneficiaries who hold a Master's degree or higher from a U.S. university.

USCIS has also announced that it expects to carry out the computer-generated random selection lottery process next week. Those petitions filed under the U.S. Master's degree quota will be selected first. Any U.S. Master's degree cases not chosen in the initial computer-generated lottery will automatically be placed into the random selection process for the remaining cap-subject 65,000 visas. For those cases not chosen in the random selection process, USCIS will return the petition along with all filing fee checks, unless the case is found to be a duplicate.

BAL Comment: Although USCIS has announced that it will begin the random computer-generated lottery process next week, employers should not expect to receive approvals or rejections of their pending cap-subject H-1B petitions for at least several more weeks. It is possible that USCIS will start generating receipt notices on those cases chosen in the lottery within the next one to two weeks so long as USCIS does not experience any difficulties in running the lottery process that it expects to start next week. 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 year 2010.