It is always good to have a full historical perspective about anything…I have tried to pull in some of the history of H1B visa cap numbers here for all of us. Here is timeline and statistics of H1B visas cap/limit over the years from 1990 to FY 2018 . All the information is gathered from USCIS Data research Web pages. It is very hard to extract the data from USCIS because the format is pdf and everything is an Image. Hope it helps you all to have a broader vision about the trend until 2011.
|
Year |
Maximum H1B visas Cap |
Description for changes |
| 1990 | 65,000 | First H1-B category enacted |
| 1999 | 115,000 | Under ACIWA( American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act) in 1998, increased number of H1B visas to 115,000 |
| 2000 | 115,000 | Stays same for year 2000. |
| 2001 | 195,000 | AC21 Act ( American Competitiveness in the Twenty-first century act ) and increased |
| 2003 | 195,000 | stays increased number. |
| 2004 | 65,000 | H1B Cap reverted back to 65,000 |
| 2004 | 65,000
+ 20,000 |
Additional 20,000 visas for aliens with U.S earned Masters or Higher degree. |
There have been no changes to the H1B Quota Cap since 2004. If we were to put in a table and graph, this is how it would look.
| Year | Regular Quota | Masters Quota |
| 2005 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2006 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2007 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2008 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2009 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2010 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2011 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2012 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2013 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2014 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2015 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2016 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
| 2017 | 65,000 | 20,000 |
Statistics Plot of H1B visa Maximum Cap Statistics from 1990 to FY 2018
Proposals to Change H1B Visa Cap Counts
Many have proposed many rules and tried to change the quota, but they all went no where. The most recent one was the Obama Comprehensive Immigration Reform that proposed to increase the H1B Quota like below.
- The regular quota H1B Visas cap from 65,000 per year to 110,000 per year.
- The advanced degree H1B cap for STEM degree holders from US schools from 20,000 to 25,000 visas.
- Also, some provisions to increase H1B quota to 180,000 per year, if there is extreme demand for highly skilled workers that fiscal year.
As of August 2017, the CIR has not gone anywhere and no changes to H1B for FY 2018. New Trump Administration has not yet passed anything. You should check out H1B Visa Cap reached dates by year from 2000 to 2018
For complete detailed information, you may visit USCIS website and look at H1B visa Research reports
Comments ( 10 )
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very useful post, thank you!
Hi Kumar,
Is there a delay in getting LCA nowadays (post September 2010)?
My employer says despite going for Premium, the LCA itself will take 2 months to recieve and I can get it filed only in January, 2011.
Im worried that the quota shouldnt get full by then.
Thanks.
Kumar, what is your first and last name, along with qualifications? I am writing a paper and need to cite you since I am using a source from one of your pages, but cannot find this information.
Lauren, you can just quote it as Kumar. Honestly, you should not quote blogs as official references because they reflect personal opinion and not citation eligible.
Hey……Please tell us what is Master Quota and General Quota ?
MS consider in Master Quota or General Quota?
And if possible please tell us about the term ‘cap’?
It is difficult to understand those facts for newbies like me
Regards
Ankit Sharma
Ankit, I will do a post with Basics of H1B visa and terms like cap, lca, rfe…
That data doesn’t say much. The cap itself doesn’t provide any useful information.
What would be useful would be a plot of when the cap was reached in each year. In some years, it wasn’t reached at all (including the years when the cap was increased to 195K.)
Joe, Very good point, your question is answered here with this post. Let me know what you think on the article with analysis.
http://redbus2us.com/2010/01/h1-b-visa-petitions-cap-reached-dates-by-year-from-2000-to-2010-recession-impact-and-trend-analysis-plot-from-2000-%E2%80%93-2010-for-2011-decision.html