CIS No Longer Accepting H-1B Petitions for Next Federal Fiscal Year
As a follow up to my earlier post, Citizenship and Immigration Services ("CIS") announced today that it has received sufficient H-1B petitions for the next fiscal year, which begins October 1, 2008, for both the base amount of 65,000 and the additional 20,000 for U.S. master's or higher graduates. For those who have been following this situation, the announcement should come as no surprise. CIS accepted petitions through April 7, 2008 to allow for delivery of the expected, large number of petitions at the two designated service centers. On a date it has yet to announce, CIS will conduct a random selection to identify the first 20,000 master's/higher petitions. Thereafter, any remaining master's/higher petitions will enter the random selection for the 65,000 remaining visas. CIS will return, with the filing fees, any petition that is not successful in the lottery. For employers that filed duplicate petitions (for the same person and same job) in hopes that at least one would be successful in the random selection, CIS will keep the filing fees for both as a punitive measure against such employers.
