USCIS H-1B CAP 2010 Update

Please note: This blog post was originally published on Tuesday, September 14, 2010.

What a difference a year makes! Last year, employers submitted over 163,000 H-1B “cap-subject” H-1B petitions during the first week of April, forcing the USCIS to conduct a lottery to select 85,000 lucky winners. This year, the agency received only 63,000 petitions during the first two weeks of April, 43,000 for the general H-1B category, and 20,000 for persons with advanced degrees. What’s more, the general category increased less than 4,000 over the next six months.

Then suddenly, between the last week of September and December 21th, the USCIS received over 20,000 new H-1B petitions and the H-1B cap 2010 was reached.

The USCIS announced on December 22nd that the H-1B cap had been reached on December 21st. New cap-subject H-1B petitions should be received by the USCIS starting on April 1, 2010 for employment commencing on October 1, 2010.

The charts below tells the story in more detail.

Date	H-1B Cap-Subject Petitions Received
December 21	H-1B CAP 2010 REACHED
December 15	64,200
December 11	62,900
December 10	62,500
December 8	61,500
December 4	61,100
November 27	58,900
November 20	56,900
November 13	55,600
November 6	54,700
October 30	53,800
October 25	52,800
September 25	46,700
September 18	46,000
August 28	45,100
August 14	45,000
August 7	44,900
July 24	44,900
July 10	44,900
July 3	45,000
June 26	44,800
June 19	44,500
June 12	44,400
June 5	44,400
May 26	45,700
May 18	45,500
May 11	45,000
May 5	45,000
April 27	45,000
April 20	44,000
April 17	43,000