Following a directive from President Obama, the government immigration website has recently commenced an expansion programme. At the same time, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service or USCIS, announced that applications for the H-1B visa are still being accepted, months after the immigration service would normally process them.

In June, President Bema announced that in three months, “USCIS will launch a vastly improved website that will, for the first time ever, allow applicants to get updates on the status of their applications via e-mail and text message and online…This is going to save [families] huge amounts of time standing in line, waiting around, making phone calls, being put on hold. It’s an example of some things that we can do administratively even as we’re working through difficult issues surrounding comprehensive immigration. We’re going to leverage cutting-edge technology to reduce the unnecessary paperwork, backlogs and the lack of transparency that’s caused so many people so much heartache.”

Anyone who has ever tried to navigate through the confusing pages of the old immigration website, is sure to be hopeful that these improvements will finally help in the processing of their applications.

The number of H-1B “specialty worker” visas has been updated by the USCIS for the fiscal year 2010. According to the service, on 26th June 2009, an estimated 44,800 H-1B cap-subject petitions and 20,000 advanced degree cap exemption petitions, the annual cap is 65,000, were received.