Archive for July 15th, 2010

USCIS Updates FY 2011 H-1B Cap Count as of July 9, 2010

Henry Chang | July 15, 2010 in United States Immigration | Comments (0)

As of July 9, 2010, approximately 24,800 H-1B cap-subject petitions were receipted. Additionally, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) has receipted 10,600 H-1B petitions for aliens with advanced degrees.

U.S. businesses use the H-1B program to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields, such as scientists, engineers, or computer programmers. The current annual cap on the H-1B category is 65,000. However, some petitions are exempt from the cap under the advanced degree exemption provided to the first 20,000 petitions filed for a beneficiary who has obtained a U.S. master’s degree or higher. Others are completely exempt from the numerical limits.

Please note that up to 6,800 H-1B numbers may be set aside from the cap of 65,000 during each fiscal year for the H-1B1 program under the terms of the legislation implementing the U.S.-Chile and U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreements. Unused numbers in this pool are made available for H-1B use for the next fiscal year.

For further information regarding the H-1B category, please review our H-1B article, which is available here.

U.S. Department of State Publishes Visa Bulletin for August 2010

Henry Chang | in United States Immigration | Comments (0)

The Department of State released its August 2010 Visa Bulletin. This month’s bulletin shows significant movement in several preference categories:

  1. The EB-2 country-specific limit for China has advanced about three months from November 22, 2005 to March 1, 2006.
  2. The EB-2 country-specific limit for India has advanced five months from October 1, 2005 to March 1, 2006.
  3. The EB-3 has advanced almost ten months in the general chargeability category, the country-specific EB-3 limits have shown more modest increases ranging from a one-month advance for China to a nine-month advance for the Philippines. The country-specific limit for Mexico remains unavailable.
  4. Other Workers category has advanced almost twelve months for all lists except the country-specific list for India, which has advanced seven months.

The August 2010 Visa Bulletin is available here.