USCIS announced on November 23 that it had received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap of 65,000 for the fiscal year (“FY”) 2012 H-1B cap as of November 22, 2011 (the 20,000 “advanced degree” exemption was previously exhausted on October 19). As such, USCIS will reject all cap-subject petitions for new H-1B specialty occupation workers seeking an employment start date in FY 2012 that were received by USCIS after November 22, 2011.
As for those petitions filed on November 22, USCIS will apply a computer-generated random selection process to select petitions needed to meet the cap and will reject all remaining cap-subject petitions not randomly selected and will return the petitions with accompanying filing fees.
Given the exhaustion of H-1B visa numbers for fiscal year 2012, employers are left with no choice but to consider alternative visa options for employing qualified foreign-born professionals. While there are a limited number of options presented from the “alphabet soup” of temporary visa categories available, there are, indeed, viable options for potential hires for whom you cannot (or will not) wait until October 1, 2012 to employ.
That the H-1B cap for FY 2012 was exhausted more than two (2) months before the cap was met for FY 2011, perhaps the U.S. economy is, in fact, on the rebound despite the headlines you might read elsewhere. Only time will tell…
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