H1B hopes diminishing ...

As we all know it, the USCIS announced that they had received about 163,000 H-1B cap petitions between April 1 and April 7, 2008. The computer random lottery selection process was completed by April 14, 2008. Since then they have been sending out receipt notices to the lottery winners including U.S. master degree holders. The number of winners would include approximately 58,000 regular cap cases plus a very small number of Singapore/Chile Free Trade H-1B1 cap cases plus 20,000 U.S. advance degree holders. Accordingly, approximately one-half of 163,000 or 80,000+ winners must have been receiving the receipt notices in the mail. The USCIS stated that all the receipt notices for the winners would be sent out by June 2, 2008. Considering the fact that we are approaching the Memorial holiday long weekend plus another weekend before June 2, 2008, Monday, there are only a few working days ahead of us and we can safely speculate that most of the receipt notices have been mailed out to the winners by now. Consequently, unless they have already received the notices, the chances for their lottery selection may be very slim and their hope for the selection is gradually fading away.
It is likely that immediately after June 2, 2008, the losers (approximately 80,000) may start receiving mails from either California Service Center or Vermont Service Center. The first type of mail will include notices that they have failed in the selection but their cases have been selected for the waiting list. These waiting list will be prepared using the estimate potential denials or withdrawals or revocations of the lottery winner cases (traditionally approximately from 10% to 15%) plus the Singapore-Chile Free Trade number left-overs. The pool and waiting list notification may include more numbers than these estimates for the obvious reasons. The exact number of the cases in the waiting list pool is at this point anybody's guess. But these numbers are likely announced by the agency sometime in the middle or late June 2008 at the earliest. The second type of mails the people will receive in the mail after June 2, 2008 include return of the petitions that failed in the lottery selection. Accordingly a large number of employers will receive thick and heavy brown envelopes in the mail. The agency plans to complete such mailing by approximately July 15 or August 2008.
The circus will then be over until April 1, 2009 unless the Congress passes one of the pending H-1B cap readjustment bills in the Congress. Unfortunately, these bills face some obstacles amidst the battle between the high-tech industry and the farm or food product processing industry, the former supporting the piecemeal immigration fix legislation mostly by the Republicans aligned with the big businesses and the latter supporting the comprehensive immigration fix legislation mostly by the Hispanics and the Democrats aligned with the farm and food processing industry and labor unions. For now, circus is over, and just as people feel at the close of circus, people start feeling emotional vacuum and emptiness followed by some sadness and frightening silence. Circus is over.....................Circus is over.................................................. .....................................................!