As of April 27th, the USCIS announced that only 45,000 cases seeking an H-1b for FY 2010 had been filed.

Senate bill 887 proposed by Senators Grassley and Durbin, contains provisions that if enacted would eliminate the use of H-1b visas for any staffing or consulting company.  Essentially, the bill would prohibit the placement of H-1b workers at any third party work-sites unless a waiver was first obtained and a waiver would not be available […]

We have just learned that there is a problem with the interface tool for the USCIS “Case Status Online” system which has caused delays in entry of receipt numbers into the system and updates of case statuses.  This is a recurring problem that the USCIS is working on to fix, but has not given a time estimate of […]

The USCIS has updated the number of cap subject petitions it has received. The USCIS has received approximately 44,000 H-1B cap petitions. The agency continues to accept petitions subject to the general cap. Additionally, the agency has received approximately 20,000 petitions for the Master’s cap.   
For cases filed for premium processing during the initial five-day filing window, […]

I suppose the trade-off for not reaching the H-1B cap and having to spend time sorting and running a lottery is that USCIS has more time on their hands to issue RFEs.  As many of you may know, just before April 1st of this year, USCIS revised the I-129 Data Collection Supplement to include a question […]

USCIS released the following statement today:
USCIS Update
April 8, 2009
USCIS Continues to Accept FY 2010 H-1B Petitions
WASHINGTON – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today announced it continues to accept H-1B nonimmigrant visa petitions subject to the fiscal year 2010 (FY 2010) cap. USCIS will continue to monitor the number of H-1B petitions received for both […]

TradingMarkets.com is reporting that Cognizant has been fined $509,000.00 for H-1b based wage violations.  this just goes to underscore how critical it is that H-1b employers understand and abide by the wage obligations of the H-1b program.

eweek has an article which argues that in spite of the recession H-1b demand will still be strong.   We all expect the cap to be hit, it’s just a question of when.  The article quotes the National Foundation for American Policy for the idea that it will hit before the beginning of the new fiscal […]