Legal Question in Immigration Law in New York

Re: Receipt date for H 1 B petition

I believe receipt date is determined by USCIS' own date stamp rather than the date of delivery by a courier service such as Fedex. That's why one needs to file time sensitive petitions way ahead of the deadline.

USCIS has determined that the �final receipt date� for H1-B petitions for the fiscal year 2006 is August 10, 2005. Petitions received on August 10 will be subject to a computer-generated, random selection process to determine whether the applicant will be selected for an H1-B under the few remaining numbers for the fiscal year 2006 quota. This is because there are not enough numbers to cover all the cases filed even on August 10. We do not know yet how many petitions were filed on August 10 or the numbers of H1-Bs still available and no time frame has been fixed for the random selection process. USCIS has decided that H1-B petitions, subject to the annual cap, received on or after August 11, will be rejected.

However, there remains some hope for those who filed late. Unused Chile/Singapore numbers will be reallocated back to the FY 2006 H-1B cap (to be made available on October 1). USCIS is authorised to make the unused H1-B visas available within the first 45 days of fiscal year 2007 to those who had applied for H1-B visas during fiscal year 2006.

The above reply is in the nature of general information, is not legal advice and should not be relied upon as such.