Amidst reports of increased vetting of new as well as renewal cases, this year has seen a drop in the number of H-1B petitions.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said on Wednesday that the agency has selected the H-1B applications that it would process for the fiscal year (FY) 2019. As in previous years, it used a computer-generated random selection process.
“On April 11, USCIS used a computer-generated random selection process to select enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally-mandated cap and the U.S. advanced degree exemption, known as the master’s cap, for fiscal year (FY) 2019,” USCIS said in a press statement.
This year the immigration agency received 190,098 H-1B petitions, which includes petitions for the advanced degree exemption as well. The required number of applications were received in the first five days of April. The agency announced that by April 6 it has received the sufficient number of H-1B petitions for the capped category.
“We expect the USCIS to begin issuing receipt notices in the petitions selected in the lottery very soon,” said Johnson Myalil in an email to The American Bazaar. Myalil is Attorney at Law with the Reston, Virginia,-based law firm High-Tech Immigration Law Group.
Amidst reports of increased vetting of new as well as renewal cases, this year has seen a drop in the number of H-1B petitions.
The number of petitions received in the previous three fiscal years, 2016, 2017 and 2018 were 233,000, 236,000, and 199,000, respectively.
Earlier this month, another immigration lawyer, Aparna Dave, who is based in Gaithersburg, MD, told The American Bazaar that employers have been reluctant to bring foreign workers due to an increased number of RFEs, and inquiries from consulates.
“There aren’t many cold hiring this year,” Dave said. “Employers don’t want to take chances because there were so many RFEs (Requests For Evidence) last year.