Monday, March 19, 2007 Reeves: H-1B ‘deadline’ for 2008 By Robert L. Reeves
THE immigration community is bracing itself for a historical and unprecedented exhaustion of the H-1B cap.
Employers can petition H-1B workers for the Oct. 1, 2007 start date beginning April 1, 2007. But since April 1 is a Sunday, applications will not be accepted until April 2.
The 65,000 visa numbers are expected to be exhausted within the first two weeks of April because demand is so high, becoming the fastest for the cap to be exhausted. Petitioners cannot wait for and must be ready to file on April 2 to have a chance of obtaining an H-1B visa number.
Bill Gates recently testified at Congressional hearings urging the cap to be eliminated entirely and that an infinite number of H-1Bs be available. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said he “agreed 100 percent” that there shouldn’t be a limit on the number of highly skilled people in the country, but suggested that Congress might not be able to do more than double the quota.
Until Congress acts to increase the quota, employers and H-1B workers will have to scramble for the visa numbers as soon as they are available.
The USCIS has informed the public that it will not accept any applications received earlier than April 2 and reject those filed before the start date. This means people who planned on filing their petitions on Friday, March 30 with the USCIS to accept on March 31 will have their cases rejected.
Because the filing date is fast approaching, and the quota is expected to be reached in either the first or second week of availability, H-1B petition preparation should be in its final stages. Those people looking for petitioners should intensify their job search right now to ensure sufficient time for an H-1B petition to be prepared for filing within the first week of April.
