Demand For H-1B Visas This Year May Exceed 300,000

Starting April 3, 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting H-1B petitions for Fiscal Year 2018 (FY2018).  As in years past, if USCIS receives more than the available 85,000 H-1B visas in the first few days of April, they will use a computer-generated random lottery to select the petitions they will process.  Based on the number of petitions received in the first few days of last year (over 236,000) and the market demand for high-skilled labor, our office anticipates USCIS receiving over 300,000 H-1B petitions in the first few days of April. 

Accordingly, time is running out for employers to timely prepare their H-1B petitions for submission on April 3rd.  Generally, it takes at least 10-14 days to prepare and file an H-1B petition, due to the prerequisite filing requirements of the Labor Condition Application (LCA), which takes up to 7 business days to certify.  Therefore, if you are responsible for your businesses' immigration planning and processing and you have already identified your H-1B candidates, please initiate the H-1B visa process in the next two weeks to ensure it is timely filed.