Government Officials speaking at the Salt Lake City AILA Annual Conference announced that the USCIS has approximately 8,300 H-1B petitions approved or in the pipeline that will count against the new exemption cap of 20,000 for FY05, as established by the H-1B Visa Reform Act of 2004. Note that, on May 24, 2005, the USCIS issued a press release announcing that they had received more than 6,393 H-1B petitions in this exempted category by that date.

Further, the USCIS announced that they currently have approximately 27,300 H-1B petitions approved or in the pipeline for FY06.

Information provided by AILA InfoNet (Doc. No. 05062560, posted Jun. 25, 2005)