H-1B visas are still available! Immigration attorneys all over the United States are in shock! We are used to staying up late at the end of March every year to file our H-1B cases on April 1st, the date the H-1B filing period opens. We are used to hearing announcements from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ("USCIS") within hours of the filing period opening on April 1st, that the H-1B "cap" of 65,000 annually-available visas has been reached! Last year, the USCIS used a "lottery system," in which it randomly selected the cap-subject petitions and rejected those petitions that did not get selected in the lottery. More than 120,000 H-1B visa applications were submitted for the 65,000 available visas!
Then, the U.S. economy took a nose-dive. Employers were forced to cut back on hiring qualified foreign workers. Employers began laying off foreign workers before U.S. workers.
In contrast to previous years, remarkably, as of July 3, 2009, the USCIS announced that it has received only 45,000 H1-B visa applications against the annual cap of 65,000! That means there is still time to apply for an H-1B visa!
-Ruchi Thaker
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