United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
announced today that the annual H-1B quota for both the regular
65,000 visa petition bachelor's degree cap and the 20,000 visa
petition U.S. master's degree cap has been met for Fiscal Year
(FY) 2018. The exact number of petitions received has yet to be
announced but will likely be shared in the coming weeks once all of
the petitions are counted. Likewise, due to the high number of
petitions received, USCIS has not yet confirmed when it will
complete
its computerized random selection, or "lottery," of H-1B
petitions for further processing.
As a reminder, under the lottery, USCIS will first randomly select
H-1B petitions for the 20,000 visas eligible under the U.S.
master's cap. All unselected master's degree petitions will
then become part of the random selection process for the 65,000
visas subject to the general quota. USCIS will return all
unselected cap-subject H-1B petitions, including the filing fee
checks, after the random selection process has been run. As this
selection process takes time for USCIS to fully complete,
unselected cases may not be returned for several months.
Please note that, as of April 3, 2017,
USCIS temporarily suspended premium processing on all H-1B
petitions, both cap and non-cap cases. Thus, all cases selected
under the lottery will be processed under the regular processing
timeline.
Ogletree Deakins will continue to monitor H-1B developments, and
will update the firm's
Immigration blog on timelines and other data as they are
released.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.