Tuesday, April 3, 2007

A weird sort of prayer request

This is what all the OT last week was for:

"The U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) announced today that it has reached the 2008 fiscal year 65,000 H-1B cap.

"As of late Monday, April 2, the Service received approximately 150,000 cap-subject petitions. Pursuant to its regulations, when the H-1B cap is reached the first day, the Service must include filings on the “final receipt date” and the following day.

"All cap-subject filings received on April 2, 2007, and April 3, 2007, will be subject to a computer-generated random selection process by USCIS. Those petitions that are not randomly selected will be rejected and returned with applicable filing fees. All petitions received on or after Wednesday, April 4, 2007, will be rejected.

"For all filings received April 2nd and 3rd, USCIS must perform data entry before the random selection process is conducted. The Service has announced that because of the high volume of filings, they will not be able to conduct the random selection for several weeks.

"At this time, USCIS does not know how many of the 20,000 cap-exempt H-1B petitions filed on behalf of aliens with U.S. Masters or higher degrees have been received as these cases are mixed with the cap-subject cases. A later announcement from USCIS will follow concerning the final receipt date for these petitions. "

H-1B visas are for non-immigrant professionals with bachelor's degrees or higher. Not making the cap has a huge effect on our clients lives. Not to mention the sheer frustration of working into the wee small hours of the morning to get these cases filed on time and then to find out they did not make it. For a point of reference - in 2004 it took 6 months to make the cap, in 2005 it took 4 months, and last year it took 2 months, this year was unprecedented.

Now the request - the firm I work for filed nearly 500 of these cases. Please pray that these cases make it through the random selection lottery.

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