April 9, 2010
CIS has announced that as of April 9, 2010, approximately 13,500 Fiscal Year 2011 regular H-1B cap petitions and approximately 5,600 U.S. Master's/advanced degree cap petitions have been received. All H-1B cap cases filed through April 9, 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.
The Immigration Service will continue to accept H-1B petitions subject to the Fiscal Year 2011 cap. For regular cap cases there is annual quota of 65,000 H-1B slots per fiscal year, minus those H-1B slots set aside for Free Trade Visas for Chileans and Singaporeans, for a total of 58,200. For advanced degree H-1B petitions, there is an additional annual quota of 20,000 slots per fiscal year. CIS has indicated that on the day it determines that sufficient regular H cap petitions have 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.
