News Release from Jewell & Associates, PC - January 29, 2010
Congress has established an annual H-1B cap of 65,000. Of that number, 6,800 are set aside for the H-1B1 program under terms of the U.S.-Chile and U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreements. The total H-1B cap number available in a given fiscal year is therefore 58,200 (65,000 minus 6,800). The law provides that any of the unused Chile/Singapore numbers from a fiscal year be reallocated for use in the subsequent fiscal year. Therefore, the unused Chile/Singapore H-1B1s from the prior fiscal year are added to the 58,200 regular cap numbers available for each new fiscal year. (This excludes the 20,000 cap exemption for holders of U.S. graduate degrees, which effectively adds another 20,000 to the H-1Bs available each year.)
Thus, the FY 2011 cap (i.e., new H-1Bs that will take effect between 10/1/2010 and 9/30/2011), to be allocated beginning in April 2010, will be based on the same formula: Subtract 6,800 for the FY 2011 H-1B1 reservation from 65,000, then add back in the unused H-1B1 numbers from FY 2010, based either on projected H-1B1 usage to the end of FY 2010, or on actual determined usage during that year, depending on when the cap is hit. In FY 2010 to date (January 2010), 129 of the 6,800 numbers have been used.
© Jewell & Associates, PC 2010