On Thursday, USCIS issued a release updating the public about the H-1B cap for fiscal year 2008. According to USCIS, they received 133,000 unique pieces of mail containing H-1B petitions on Monday and Tuesday. However, the number of H-1B petitions will exceed 133,000 because some pieces of mail contain more than one H-1B petition. As of Wednesday, 28,052 of the cases sorted are H-1B petitions subject to the cap and 4,703 are Masters' cases exempt from the cap. The release also states that it will take USCIS a "substantial" amount of time to sort through the mail. To view the full release, click here.

It is important to be aware of a few factors:

• We received very few receipts for Premium Processing petitions via e-mail. Those receipts were received on Monday and Tuesday. Since then, we have not received any receipts;
• USCIS has communicated to the American Immigration Lawyers Association that they understand that Premium Processing petitions should not have an advantage over other petitions;
• Our understanding is that all cap subject cases will be issued a receipt and USCIS will then do its lottery to determine who the beneficiaries of the cap subject cases will be;
• We have been given no indication as to when USCIS expects this entire process to be completed. Frankly, we would be surprised if this is all sorted out during this month. Do not be surprised if this process drags on for one, two months or more;
• Based upon the numbers, assuming that USCIS is accurate with its estimates, it is very likely that we are facing odds of 1/3 to 1/2 of being selected in the lottery.

As more information is made available, we will post it on our website and we will e-mail it to our clients. For those of you who are employers, please note that this is the time to let Congress know that the H-1B cap must be raised to meet the demands of U.S. businesses.