Recent Developments In Immigration Law

USCIS Announces H-1B Cap Has Been Reached

As reported in our previous

Alert, on April 3, 2007, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that, due to extreme demand, the H-1B cap for Fiscal Year 2008 was reached. Annually, 65,000 new H-1B visas are made available, with an additional 20,000 H-1B visas made available to holders of U.S. master's degrees or higher.

Per regulation, on April 12, 2007, USCIS conducted a random selection process to determine which petitions will be accorded an H-1B visa number among those received on April 2 and April 3, 2007. USCIS estimates that it received approximately 150,000 cap-subject H-1B petitions on April 2, the first day filings opened for FY2008. USCIS also estimates that as of April 18, 2007, of those petitions, approximately 18,000 are to be applied to the master's degree cap of 20,000, which would indicate that there still may be H-1B visa numbers available to those beneficiaries who hold a U.S. master's degree or higher.

As a result of this unprecedented demand for H-1B visa numbers, a significant number of H-1B petitions that were filed on the first and second days of availability will be rejected now that the random selection process is completed.

USCIS has also announced that, for those cases filed under the premium processing option, the 15-day premium processing period for cap-subject H-1Bs will not begin until after the random lottery has selected the petitions for processing.

USCIS Announces H-2B Cap Has Been Reached

On March 23, 2007, USCIS announced that a sufficient number of H-2B petitions had been received to reach the H-2B cap for the final six months of FY2007. As such, USCIS will reject petitions for new H-2B workers seeking employment start dates prior to October 1, 2007.

Petitions for both current and returning H-2B workers do not count toward the cap. In order to count as a "returning worker," the worker must have been counted against the H-2B numerical cap between October 1, 2003, and September 30, 2006.

In addition, USCIS will continue to process petitions filed to extend the stay of a current H-2B worker; change the terms of employment for a current H-2B worker and extend their stay; and allow current H-2B workers to change or add employers and extend their stay.

USCIS Announces Timeline Extension for Filing "O" and "P" Petitions

On April 11, 2007, USCIS announced it would be giving employers more time to bring foreign workers with extraordinary abilities to the United States. Employers can now file "O" and "P" petitions under normal...