On April 8, 2008, DHS announced that it had received enough H-1B visa petitions to meet the cap for fiscal year 2009 (October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009). H-1B visas may be granted to highly skilled, college-educated, temporary foreign workers for a maximum of six years, but only 65,000 H-1B visas may be issued per year. DHS’s Citizenship and Immigration Services received approximately 163,000 visa petitions during a five-day filing period, and the visas will be distributed via lottery. 

In March and April 2008, three bills were introduced to raise the annual H-1B visa cap and to recapture and redistribute unused visas from prior years. For summaries of the pending legislation, please see our posts on The Strengthening United States Technology and Innovation Now Act (H.R.5642), the Global Competitiveness Act of 2008 (S.2839), and House Bill H.R.5882.