The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued confirmation that the FY2010 H-1B cap was reached as of December 21, 2009.? This means that a sufficient number of cap-subject H-1B petitions have been filed with USCIS to meet the statutory limitation of 65,000.? Any petitions received on December 21st will be subjected to a computer-generated random lottery process.? Any cases received after December 21st will be rejected.
With the surge of H-1B filings in October, the advanced U.S. degree cap of 20,000 had already been used up.? This is a reversal of the normal trend wherein the regular H-1B cap of 65,000 is nearly always exhausted before the advance U.S. degree set aside.