Published May 3, 2016

 

The first week of April, 2016 marks 6 months before the start of the U.S. government’s 2017 fiscal new year – October 1, 2016, and the earliest date interested employers can file an H-1B visa petition for a prospective professional foreign worker.   This year, like the past few years, the annual supply of 85,000 H-1B visas were quickly snatched up, and exhausted within a matter of days.  In fact, during just this opening filing period for 2017 H-1B visas (first week of April), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received 236,000 visa petitions – 3 times the supply, and again had to conduct a lottery to determine which of these petitions would be considered.   For certain, the current annual supply is a mere pittance compared to previous years’ annual caps of 195,000, when our Congress perceived foreign professional workers as less of a threat (to the economy? to the labor market?) and with less disdain.     

The lucky petitioners and workers have been alerted to the good news with the issuance of a DHS/CIS receipt.  The unlucky parties will receive back their rejected petitions and filing fees in the coming weeks.

 

 

PUBLISHED May 3, 2016– “IMMIGRATION LAW FORUM” Copyright © 2016, By Law Offices of Richard Hanus, Chicago, Illinois