On June 1, 2012, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced an update to the number of H-1B petitions received to date for the FY2013 cap: 55,600 petitions under the 65,000 regular H-1B cap, and 18,700 petitions under the 20,000 H-1B U.S. Master’s Degree Exemption. This means that approximately 14.5% of regular H-1B petitions and about 6.5% of U.S. Master’s Degree Exemption petitions remained available as of June 1. Employers should also note that it is currently taking seven days to obtain a certified Labor Condition Application (LCA) from the U.S. Department of Labor, which is a prerequisite to filing an H-1B petition. Consequently, as the cap is expected to be met at some point during the next seven to ten days, employers that plan on filing H-1B petitions should act quickly.