As of January 14, 2011, approximately 60,700 H-1B cap-subject petitions were receipted. Additionally, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) has receipted 20,000 H-1B petitions for aliens with advanced (master’s or higher) degrees from the United States.

In other words, there are only 4,300 H-1B numbers available under the general cap (assuming of course that no H-1B numbers have been set aside for the H-1B1 program). The U.S. master’s cap has already been reached.

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.