On September 17, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released data that reveals the agency's apparent mismanagement of the annual H-1B quota, leading approximately 45,000 H-1B available cap numbers to remain unused in the last four fiscal years. The stunning news was made public in USCIS' response to a Freedom of Information Act request about the use of H-1B visas in previous years. Although the agency has acknowledged the presence of available H-1B numbers for the 2013 fiscal year, which runs from October 1, 2012, through September 30, 2013, it has not announced how these newly discovered numbers will be allocated. Prior to the release of the new data, the yearly quota was believed to have been reached just a few months after the start of the application period - a phenomenon that has become the norm due to the overwhelming demand for H-1B visas.