The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said that it has received enough applications to claim the 64,300 H-1B visas it has available for the 2007 federal fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

It also said that there were an additional 20,000 visas available for advanced degrees holders. As of this week, only 5,830 visas had been issued, but the number of applications for the remaining slots is expected to pick up now that students are graduating from college.
According to the agency, this is the earliest that the H-1B cap has been reached. No new applications are going to be accepted until next April.

The cap was set at 65,000 by Congress, but 6,800 visas are set aside for Chile and Singapore under trade agreements. The visas made available to those two countries are called H-1B1, but only 700 were claimed, and the others were added back into the H-1B cap, according to the USCIS.

The H-1B is an controversial program and its supporters say that visas are needed to ensure that the U.S. has an ample supply of highly skilled technical professionals. Opponents see it as a means for replacing citizens and permanent residents with lower-cost workers.

The U.S. Senate has approved a provision in a pending immigration bill that would raise the annual cap to 115,000, but the House and Senate have not agree on a final immigration bill and it's fate is uncertain.