H-1B Visa Cap for FY 2015 Reached

Author: Melissa A. Silver, XpertHR Legal Editor

April 7, 2014

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it received enough H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap of 65,000 visas for fiscal year 2015 and that it also received more petitions than the 20,000 H-1B visas available under the US advanced degree exemption. This is the second year in a row that the statutory cap was reached in less than a week.

As previously reported, H-1B visas are issued to foreign workers who will work in a specialty occupation in the US. A specialty occupation position is defined as a job that requires at least a bachelor's degree (or its equivalent) in the specialty field of study. Several organizations are exempt from the numerical cap, including institutions of higher education (or an affiliated or related nonprofit entity), nonprofit research organizations and governmental research organizations. There are currently only 65,000 new H-1B visas available each year and an additional 20,000 H-1B visas available to foreign nationals holding a master's degree or higher from a US university.

Although the USCIS only began accepting H-1B visa petitions for the 2015 fiscal year on April 1, the number of H-1B petitions filed reached the statutory cap in less than a week. As a result, according to the USCIS, it will use a computer-generated process that "will randomly select the number of petitions needed to meet the caps of 65,000 visas for the general category and 20,000 under the advanced degree exemption. USCIS will reject and return filing fees for all cap-subject petitions that are not selected, unless found to be a duplicate filing." The USCIS has not determined when the random selection will take place, but prior to running the selection process, it will conclude the initial intake of all of the H-1B petitions it received during the filing period.

The USCIS also announced that it will continue to accept and process petitions that are exempt from the statutory cap, such as petitions filed to extend the amount of time a current H-1B worker may remain in the US.

Employers' petitions that were not filed or are not selected will have to wait until April 2015 to file an H-1B petition. An employer seeking to sponsor new hires on H-1B status should ensure that it files the appropriate H-1B petitions as soon as the USCIS begins accepting them.