April 1, 2014, marks the opening of the H-1B cap, and companies across the United States are preparing for a highly competitive filing season. The H-1B non-immigrant visa category is available to businesses wishing to hire persons in a specialty occupation position—defined as one that requires the application of highly specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent in that particular specialty.1 The H-1B skilled worker visa is one of the most important options available to companies looking to hire foreign-born professionals on a temporary basis, and it is essentially the only option available for businesses looking to recruit new, highly skilled talent from top universities and the labor market abroad.
In the Fiscal Year 2015 cap season, companies are expected to file a large number of applications for the 85,000 H-1B visas available under the current statutory quota. In April 2013 the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received more than 124,000 H-1B visa petitions in the first five days of the FY 2014 cap, forcing the government to default to a lottery system. One-third of all the petitions—or more than 31 percent of the total number of cap filings—were subsequently rejected through the lottery.
