Friday, April 5 – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced the FY 2014 H-1B Cap was reached and they had received approximately 124,000 petitions during that filing period. On Sunday, April 7, USCIS announced they will use a random selection “lottery” process to allocate the 65,000 visas for the general category and 20,000 visas under the advanced degree program while all the others will be rejected. It is expected that this will take at least 30 days before we start to receive confirmation of acceptance in the lottery.
Laura Lichter, President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), commented in a press release the United States needs to expand the H-1B program to meet market demands. She, along with many others, stated the H-1B Cap was reached so quickly that it shows companies are hiring foreign talents and this limit is an unsustainable situation that is bad for business.
It is estimated that this selection process will take some time and we estimate that it will be at least mid-May until we can expect any news on our individual cases. David Swaim has predicted that we will either receive a Receipt Notice from USCIS, which will mean the case has been selected in the lottery, or, we will receive back the returned H-1B Petition, which will mean that the case has not been selected.
Cite as “AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 13040544 & 13040848 posted April 5 & 8”