December 21, 2010
CIS announced that as of December 17, 2010, 53,900 Fiscal Year 2011 regular H-1B cap petitions and 19,700 U.S. Master’s/advanced degree cap petitions have been received. The Immigration Service will continue to accept H-1B petitions subject to the Fiscal Year 2011 cap. Since the last count conducted on December 10, USCIS has received an additional 1,500 regular petitions and 600 advanced degree cap petitions. All H-1B cap cases filed through December 17, 2010 have been accepted and counted against the H-1B quota. This does not mean that the filings have been approved, but just that they have not been subject to an H cap lottery.
CIS will continue to accept H-1B petitions subject to the Fiscal Year 2011 cap. For regular cap petitions there is an annual quota of 58,200 H-1B slots per fiscal year. For advanced degree H-1B petitions, there is an additional annual quota of 20,000 slots per year. There are also 7,000 slots set aside for nationals of Chile and Singapore. CIS has indicated that on the day it determines that sufficient regular H cap petition shave been received to meet the Fiscal Year 2011 quota, it will conduct a computerized random selection lottery from among the petitions received on that day.
