WHEN WILL THE H-1B CAP BE REACHED?

The H-1B cap opened on April 1.  Any H-1B cap-subject petition that is received on or before April 5 is considered a first day filing.  It is unknown at this time whether the H-1B cap will be reached on the first day or not.  In a March 15, 2013 press release the USCIS predicted that,

Based on feedback from a number of stakeholders, USCIS anticipates that it may receive more petitions than the H-1B cap between April 1, 2013 and April 5, 2013.

If the USCIS receives more petitions than it is statutorily allowed to approve it will commence an H-1B lottery.  Any H-1B petition that does not “win” the lottery will be returned to the employer.

This begs the question of whether the H-1B cap will in fact be reached by April 5.  MU Law had its busiest week, filing more H-1B cap-subject petitions than it ever has.  This leads us to believe that the H-1B cap will be reached by April 5.

ILW.com’s Roger Algase had an interesting report yesterday.  He says that a FedEx representative told him that their delivery service sent 23,000 to the Vermont Service Center on Monday April 1.  If this report is true then the H-1B cap surely will be reached by April 5.  FedEx is one of three major US courier services.  The Vermont Service Center is one of two receiving facilities for H-1B cap-subject petitions.  April 1 is just one of the five days that H-1B cap-subject petitions will be received.

Traditionally the USCIS announces when the H-1B cap is reached within 72 hours of the 65,000^th H-1B cap-subject petition filing.  Based on all of the data, MU Law’s expectation is that the USCIS will make an announcement sometime next week that the H-1B cap was indeed reached on April 5.