U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it is continuing to accept H-1B nonimmigrant visa petitions for Fiscal Year 2011 (October 1, 2010 to September 30, 2011). The agency began accepting petitions on April 1, 2010, and after one week had received approximately 13,500 petitions subject to the general cap and 5,600 petitions subject to the advanced degree exception. It took approximately nine months for USCIS to receive enough applications to meet the FY 2010 cap, with the bulk of petitions being filed by the end of October 2009.

The H-1B program allows businesses to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialized fields, e.g., science, engineering, computer programming. The program allows for 65,000 regular-cap visas, and an additional 20,000 visas for petitioners with advanced degrees (master’s degree or higher).