Washington sources added that the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said it has reached the Congressionally-mandated 65,000 H-1B visa cap for fiscal year 2019 and would conduct a lottery to decide successful applicants for the work visa popular among Indian IT professionals. Meanwhile the fiscal year begins October 1, 2018.
Accordingly the H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Further the technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China. Meanwhile as per the statement the USCIS has also received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to meet the 20,000 visa cap for advanced degree exemption, known as the master's cap.
Moreover the statement did not mention the exact number of H-1B petitions
it received since April 2, when it started accepting applications for the
popular work visas for highly skilled Indian professionals. It added “They will
not have exact petition receipt numbers for a few weeks. However, the USCIS
will be conducting a lottery as we have done in past years. USCIS will continue
to accept and process petitions filed to extend the amount of time a current
H-1B worker may remain in the United States; change the terms of employment for
current H-1B workers”.
