H-1B visas

On April 3, 2007, the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced it had received enough H-1B visa petitions to meet the cap on such visas for fiscal year 2008, which begins on October 1, 2007. School districts can hire foreign teachers using the H-1B visa program. H-1B petitions can be filed 6 months before the starting date of employment, meaning the first day a petition could be filed for FY2008 was April 2, 2007. Only 58,200 H-1B visas for new employment may be issued each year, plus any of the 6,800 H-1B1 visas set aside for Chilean and Singaporean citizens that went unused during the previous fiscal year. Additionally, exempted from the cap are up to 20,000 H-1B petitions annually for foreign nationals with U.S.-earned graduate degrees. USCIS does not know how many petitions it has received in the latter category and will make a future announcement regarding the “final receipt date” for such petitions.

[USCIS update]