USCIS Continues To Accept H-1B Petitions

The H-1B annual cap of 65,000 for Fiscal Year 2010 has not been reached. As of April 20, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received only about 44,000 H-1B petitions. Prior USCIS updates reported that the agency received approximately 42,000 petitions during the initial five-day filing window that started on April 1 and an additional 1,000 petitions in the following week.

Hence, the USCIS is still accepting H-1B petitions until the maximum annual cap of 65,000 is reached. Additionally, it will continue to accept advanced degree petitions although approximately 20,000 have been received. This number would be enough to fill the quota reserved for them but the USCIS said that not all of those petitions are approvable based on its prior experience.

The slow rate of submission of H-1B petitions after the initial application period indicates that most H-1B filings were rushed to meet what everyone thought was the deadline.

At this time, those that paid an additional filing fee of $1,000 for 15-day premium processing have been issued their filing receipts and many of these cases have been adjudicated.

H-1B is a non-immigrant worker visa which allows U.S. employers to hire highly skilled workers temporarily in ˜specialty occupations’ that require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree. Traditionally, these occupations are engineers, architects, information technologists, computer programmers, systems analysts, teachers, accountants, management analysts, doctors, college professors and other professionals. It also includes fashion models of distinguished merit and ability.

Registered Nurses are not eligible for H-1B unless the petitioner can show that the position requires a bachelor’s degree, that the degree requirement is common in the industry and that the petitioner normally requires a degree for the said position.

The nursing positions that qualify for H-1B include clinical nurse specialist, nurse practitioner, certified RN anesthetist, certified nurse midwife and upper level manager in hospital administrative position.

When the USCIS receives the necessary number of petitions to meet the maximum cap, it will issue a memo stating that as of that “final receipt date”, which is the date it physically receives the petitions (and not the postmark date), it will conduct the random selection or lottery to select the H-1B petitions until the numerical limit of 65,000 is met.

Exempted from the cap are those employed by institutions of higher education or related/affiliated non-profit entity or who are employed by non-profit research organizations, or governmental research organizations. Also exempt are those with previously approved H-1B that are filing for extensions or renewals, change of the terms of employment, change of employers or concurrent work in a second H-1B position.

Duplicate filing of H-1B petitions will result in outright denial of the petitions.