USCIS Announces That H-1B Cap Has Been Reached For FY 2015

08 Apr 2014

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on 7th April 2014, that is has received maximum number of congressionally mandated regular H-1B cap of 65,000 for the fiscal years 2015. USCIS also announced that it had received greater than the numerical limit of 20,000 H-1B petitions under the US higher degree exemption. USCIS will discard any cap-subject petitions that are received after the date of 7th April, 2014.

Before going for computer based lottery system to select the applicants, USCIS will first finish the intake of all applications that are received during the filing period which ended on April 7th 2014. Due to high number of petitions filed, USCIS is not able to disclose the date on which it will start the selection process.

A computer based lottery system will select the number of applications randomly to meet the 65,000 cap of general category and also for 20,000 under US Higher Degree exemptions. Petitions received by the USCIS during the filing period that are not selected under computer based lottery system will be rejected and returned with the filing fees.
The agency will no more accept new petitions and the companies cannot file new H-1B petitions until April 1, 2015. However, US Citizenship and Immigration Services will still continue to accept the petitions filed that are exempt from the cap-subject. This includes:

• Foreign nationals already in the US with H-1B visa and wishing to extend their status
• Foreign nations with H-1B visas in the US, working for a cap subject employer, seeking to change their employer.
• Foreign nationals looking for an employment with some H-1B exempt employers like non-profit research organizations, government research organizations and Universities.

US employers use H-1B visas to employ foreign nationals in occupations which require experts in certain specializations such as science, computer programming, and engineering.

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