BILL GATES, STEVE BALLMER, BRAD SMITH AND SEAN PARKER JOIN ZUCKERBERG SUPERPAC

In a great move of support for Mark Zuckerberg's new SuperPac or political advocacy group for immigration reform called FWD.us four tech giants have joined to render their names and support: Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Brad Smith (CEO of Intuit) and Sean Parker (Napster's co-founder who also helped Zuckerberg in the early Facebook days).
It's a great show of support for the topic Zuckerberg is spearheading and a great opportunity for these technology giants to put their money where their mouths are... Two thumbs up!
http://allthingsd.com/20130426/please-welcome-bill-gates-steve-ballmer-brad-smith-and-sean-parker-to-the-zuckerpac/

H-1B RECEIPTS SLOWLY TRICKLING

So far we have received all of our U.S. master's cap H-1B cases filed on the April 1 week. Our clients with the U.S. master's cap were very lucky and they all got selected in the lottery.
Now we are slowly also getting cases from the regular H-1B cap, but only a small percentage so far of receipt notices compared to the cases that we filed.
USCIS expects to send receipt notices well into May for cap cases.
I hope our H-1B regular cap clients are as lucky as the master's ones!
Update soon to follow.

SISKIND'S SUMMARY OF IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT

Please read the very thoughtful analysis from my law partner Greg Siskind's summary section by section of the Immigration reform act introduced today at the Senate:

http://discuss.ilw.com/content.php?1706-Blogging-Section-by-Section-Summary-of-Senate-Immigration-Bill-Title-II-Legal-Immigration-Reform-by-Greg-Siskind

USCIS RECEIVED APPROXIMATELY 124,000 H-1B PETITIONS

USCIS received approximately 124,000 H-1B petitions during the filing period from April 1, 2013 to April 5, 2013, including petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption. On April 7, 2013, USCIS conducted its lottery (computer-generated random selection process) to select the 85,000 petitions (probably a number closer to 82,000 petitions) to fill the cap.
For cap-subject petitions not randomly selected, USCIS will reject and return the petition with filing fees. The agency conducted the selection process for advanced degree exemption petitions first. All advanced degree petitions not selected were part of the random selection process for the 65,000 limit.
So, this means that applicants have about 67% or about 2 out of 3 changes of getting selected. Not great at all.

H-1B CAP FOR 2014 REACHED; LOTTERY WILL HAPPEN

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced late Friday that it has received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap for fiscal year (FY) 2014. USCIS has also received more than 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of persons exempt from the cap under the advanced degree exemption.
USCIS will not accept H-1B petitions subject to the FY 2014 cap or the advanced degree exemption after Friday April 5, 2013. USCIS will use their lottery system (a computer-generated random selection process) among all FY 2014 cap-subject petitions received through April 5, 2013. They will run a lottery on the advanced degree cases first and then all the advanced degrees not selected will join the pool with the other cases.
USCIS received very high volume and they do not know yet what date the lottery results will be announced.  Also, USCIS is not providing the total number of petitions received, so no one knows as of yet.
Congress, what more proof do you need that we need more H-1B numbers???