Houston: The US yesterday said it has received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap of 65,000 visas for the fiscal year 2015.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has also received more than the limit of 20,000 H-1B petitions filed under the advanced degree exemption.
According to its release, USCIS said it received about 172,500 H-1B petitions during the filing period which began on April 1, including petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption.
On April 10, USCIS completed a computer-generated random selection process, or lottery, to select enough petitions to meet the 65,000 general-category cap and 20,000 cap under the advanced degree exemption.
For cap-subject petitions not randomly selected, USCIS will reject and return the petition with filing fees, unless it is found to be a duplicate filing.
The agency conducted the selection process for the advanced degree exemption first.
All advanced degree petitions not selected then became part of the random selection process for the 65,000 limit.
On March 25, USCIS announced that they would begin premium processing for H-1B cap cases no later than April 28.
US businesses use the H-1B programme to employ foreign workers, including from India, in occupations that require highly specialised knowledge in fields such as science, engineering and computer programming.
