Today the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that they have received approximately 17,400 regular cap H1B applications and 8,200 Advanced degrees cap petitions. As the H1B cap is still unexhausted from both the 65,000 regular cap and 20,000 advanced degrees cap, the USCIS will continue to accept FY2012 H1B petitions until the congressionally mandated numerical limitation is used up.
Based on last year’s statistic, there has been almost 300% increase of regular H1B petitions and 55% increase of the advanced degrees cap received by the USCIS in the month April. With that said, as of April 9, 2012, approx. 17,000 regular cap H1B petitions were filed compared to 2011 at the same time, there were only approximately 5,000 petitions filed. Granted that it is only 10,000 above prior year and significantly weaker than the bustling job market as in 2006 and 2007 where the cap was exhausted on April 1. However, the … Continue reading…