H-1B visa cap for FY2025 for regular and master’s degree reached, says USCIS

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced.

That it has received enough petitions to reach the congressionally mandated H-1B visa cap for regular and master’s degrees for the fiscal year 2025. In all, 65,000 H-1B visa regular cap and 20,000 H-1B visa US advanced degree exemption are to be issued.

In the coming days, the USCIS will update registrants about their H-1B visa status through their online accounts ‘myUSCIS’. Those not selected will see the status message, “Not Selected: Not eligible to file an H-1B cap petition based on this registration”, once the notification process is complete.

The deadline for filing H-1B cap subject petitions online was June 30, 2024.

However, since June 30 was a Sunday, the USCIS announced that properly filed paper petitions received by July 1, 2024, would be accepted as timely submissions.

Earlier this year, USCIS extended the initial registration period for the FY 2025 H-1B cap. The registration window, which opened on March 6, 2024, was extended to March 25, 2024.

The H-1B programme enables US employers to hire foreign workers temporarily on a non-immigrant basis for specialised roles or as fashion models with distinguished merit and ability. These specialised roles require advanced theoretical and practical expertise in a particular field, along with a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. Eligible fields include sciences, medicine, healthcare, education, biotechnology, business, and more.

However, top US companies like Google, Amazon, Infosys, and IBM have sponsored fewer H-1B visas in 2024, according to USCIS data.

H-1B visa holders are primarily from India, but this year’s data shows a decline in sponsorships by most major firms. For the fiscal year 2024, which runs from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024, nearly all of the top 15 H-1B sponsoring companies reduced their approvals.

In fiscal 2023, Indian nationals made up 72.3% of the 386,000 H-1B visas issued, while Chinese nationals accounted for 11.7%.

Despite this, USCIS will continue to accept and process petitions that are otherwise exempt from the cap. Petitions filed for current H-1B workers who have been counted previously against the cap, and who still retain their cap number, are exempt from the FY 2025 H-1B cap.