Submitted by EconWeekly

I just read about this. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received 163,000 applications for H1-B visas through the April 7 deadline. Since that number exceeds the visa cap, the government will not consider any more applications this year (Source: USCIS, via the H1B data blog). 31,200 of those applications were for the quota of applicants with an advanced degree. (I wrote about the H1-B visa system a couple of weeks ago.) The quotas are: 20,000 for applicants with an advanced degree, and 65,000 for the rest.

The USCIS will hold two lotteries this week. The first one is for applicants with an advanced degree from a US institution (MA or higher). Applicants who are not selected will be pooled with the rest of the applications in the second lottery.

The probability of getting a work visa is then 80.4% for an applicant with an advanced degree from a US university, and 45.5% for the rest of the applicants.

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