The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that, it has received more than  2,36,000 H-1B petitions within just five days of opening up the visa process, which is three times more than the Congressionally-mandated cap for the coveted work visa sought by Indian IT professionals for 2017. The agency has completed the lottery or computerized draw of lots, for granting  65,000 H-1B visas after receiving over 2 lakh visa applications.

According to  USCIS, it also received over the limit of 20,000 H-1B petitions from those international students, who completed their studies from the US  academic institute and universities in subjects , technology, engineering, science and  mathematics.

Also read: US to take action against Indian students for illegal stay

USCIS informed that, it has received more than  2,36,000 H-1B petitions including petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption, during the  filing period, that started on April 1. A  computer-generated random selection process was used by  USCIS on April 9 to determine the successful applications,  65,000 general-category cap and the 20,000 cap under the advanced degree exemption or  master’s cap.

All  unselected petitions will be rejected or returned by the USCIS to applicants with  their filing fees. USCIS will start premium processing for H-1B cap cases before May 16, as the agency announced on  March 16 this year.

Mail Today reported that, a senior Nasscom executive said that,  "the details would take some time to emerge but Indian companies such s TCS, Infosys and Wipro are expected to get a lion's share of the visas. Canada and the Phillipines are the closest competitors."

Nandini