The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced that it’s received 72 percent more applications for H-1B visas than last year, according to Greg Wald of Squire Sanders. We’ve previously reported these visas for foreign workers in specialty occupations consistently get snapped up at a record pace. But this year, it seems to be faster than ever.
The agency ran two lotteries to see which workers will be lucky enough to stay in the country: one for the 65,000 general-category quota, and the other for a 20,000-person cap under the advanced-degree exemption, explains Wald. Those who weren’t successful in the advanced-degree lottery were rolled into the general category one. “Based on these USCIS figures, cases had roughly a 45% chance of being chosen in the standard cap lottery—a significant drop from last year’s 62%,” he says.
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