The U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on their website that the cap for H-1B Visa was not reached by Thursday, April 9. The annual quota for H-1B visa applications, which are filed on April 1 each year, is 65,000 for regular H-1B visas and an additional 20,000 H-1B visas for aliens with an advanced degree. On Thursday, nine days into filing, the USCIS had received 42,000 applications for regular a H-1B and 20,000 applications for foreigners with advanced degrees. This is the first time in years that the cap on H-1B visa is not reached. Last year the USCIS received over 160,000 applications in just 5 days, resulting in a lottery for the available visa.
The past showed that the demand of H-1B visas is correlated directly with the state of the US economy. With the success of the dot-com sector the cap kept getting raised by Congress. In 2001 the annual quota of H-1B visas reached a record high at 195,000 with 165,000 of these available visas actually issued. After the dot-com bubble burst the number of application fell drastically and only 79,000 H-1B visas were issued.
It is still expected that the H-1B cap will be reached this year. As students can not apply for H-1B visas before they graduate, an increase in applications with the USCIS is expected in May.
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