Indian IT professionals have been a major beneficiary of the H1B visa programme in the past. An additional 20,000 H1B can also be issued to those foreign professionals who have masters or higher degree from the US.

Though the USCIS received 20,000 petitions, it continues to accept applications in this category too. For the fiscal 2010, the USCIS started receiving H1B petitions from April 1. In the first five working days, it received 42,000 H1B petitions. After that, USCIS has received just 7,000 more H1B petitions in the last four months.