The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced yesterday that it has received approximately 44,000 H-1B petitions towards the Congressionally mandated 65,000 cap.

The USCIS will continue to accept petitions subject to the general cap.

Historically, the general H-1B visa cap has been reached within the first one to two days of the application period. 

However, last year, the USCIS kept the application period open for seven calendar days and subsequently conducted a lottery process to randomly select the 65,000 applications that were to be processed. 

In fact, the USCIS received approximately 163,000 applications last year.

This year, because of the downturn in the U.S. economy, employers have not submitted as many applications. 

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