Tag Archives: h1b cap

H1B Visa September 2011 Quote Update

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As an addition update for the Fy2012 H1B visa season that commenced April 1, 2011 we have had slow growth in the overall H1B visa quota numbers throughout the year and again like FY2011, we are about to go into the following US Immigration year.

September is the last month of the US Immigration year and October 1st is the start of the new year otherwise known as FY2012. That means if you have already been approved for an H1B visa since April 1, 2011, your new visa takes effect next month. It also means that you if you are sponsored now, given how long the application process takes even with premium processing, you will be able to start working immediately which is a great selling point for foreigners to a prospective employer and sponsor as opposed to earlier in the year.

So as of September 9, 2011, which is the most recent H1B quota update the USCIS has announced. There are currently 32,200 petitions to count towards the general 65,000 H1B visa cap which only includes petitions that are approved or pending.
Anything that has already been denied is not included.

Additionally at September 9, 16,700 petitions have been received for the US Advanced Degree exemption quota portion of 20,000. It should be noted that if the advanced degree quota fills up, then those petitions go into the pool for the regular 65,000 cap.

This equates to about a 7.000 increase in the main cap since the last USCIS update on August 12 and a 2,000 increase in the Advanced Degree Exemption category. Given over half of the main cap still is remaining the opportunities still exist as they have for the past 2 years for foreigners right through the rest of 2011 to find employers and most likely it will continue into 2012

Cap Type Cap Amount Cap Eligible Petitions Date of Last Count
H-1B Regular Cap 65,000 32,200 9/9/2011
H-1B Master’s Exemption 20,000 16,700 9/9/2011

(It should be noted that the related H-1B1 visa for Chilean and Singaporean citizens are not included in this cap)

So it would seem that there is plenty of visas still available and judging by the moderate amount of applications received thus far, traditional H1B visa sponsor companies are still nowhere the levels of hiring they were in 2006-8,

Good Luck to All Who Are Searching!

Cj

H1B Visa Statistics

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We thought coming up to another H1B visa season we would give you some perspective on the H1B visa itself. So we will cover some of the more recent and historical statistics about this visa category to both give you an idea as to where to focus on this year and also how well prepared you need to be with your H1B Application filing.

H1B Immigration Year H1B Visa Cap Reached
FY2004 October 1, 2003
FY2005 October 1, 2004
FY2006 August 10, 2005
FY2007 May 26, 2006
FY2008 April 3, 2007
FY2009 April 7, 2008
FY2010 December 21, 2009

Credit (http://redbus2us.com)

So you can see the really crazy period was between 2006-2008 prior to the Global Economic crisis where the 65,000 cap was reached soon after the April 1 H1B visa filing opening. In 2004, the H1B visa quota was set back to 65,000 with the 20,000 extra cap for the US Advanced Degree holders exemption.
Prior to 2004 for 2 years, the H1B visa cap was 195,000 under the American 21st Century Competitiveness Act and then before that for 3 years it was 115,000 under the American Competitiveness Workforce Improvement Act.

Interestingly from 2001-2003, the H1B visa cap was never reached in the immigration year and in 1999 the USCIS issued more H1B visa than they had available. This was found after an audit by KPMG following the H1B visa season.

Now as we well known the past H1B visa season Fy2010 that recently concluded in December, 2009 was a extra long season due to the global economic crisis causing both US workers and foreigners to be laid off. In fact when you look at the top H1B visa employers of this past season, there was a marked change from previous years where some of the usual heavyweights like Tata and Infosys didn’t feature and companies like Microsoft were far less active in hiring foreigners.

To give you an idea of what the past H1B visa season was like we will look at some of the statistics released by the USCIS. Approximately 43% of all H1B petitions were for computer specialties. Most of these tended to be system analyst types as they as a subset were close to 38% of approved petitions.

A full third of the approved H1B visa applications were in the areas of education, engineering, architecture and executive areas Occupations in architecture, engineering, surveying, education, and executive specializations constituted another 33% of the total H-1B petitions approved. Drilling down further, electronic and electrical engineers represented about 4% where as Auditors and Accountants were closer to 5%.

Finally approximately 45% of people who were approved this past H1B visa season’s highest level of education was a Bachelor’s degree. This is showing the growing trend towards to advanced degree qualifications in the US being the norm and being the better ticket for a foreigner to finding work successfully in the US.

CJ