USCIS has received sufficient number of petitions for the congressionally-mandated 20,000 H-1B master cap for FY 2020. The 65,000 regular cap was reached last week.
USCIS has also announced that this year, they have received 201,011 filings in the week between April 1 and April 5, which is an increase of 10,913 petitions from last year. On April 10, USCIS ran two lotteries to choose the cases that will be processed to completion. The first lottery selected enough cases from the standard and advanced-degree filings to meet the standard quota of 65,000. Advanced-degree filings not selected in the first draw were placed in a second lottery to choose enough filings to meet the cap exemption of 20,000 for holders of U.S. advanced degrees.
Employers whose petitions have been selected for processing should begin to get filing receipts within weeks after the lotteries are run. Employers who have requested premium processing should already receive email receipts within days after the selection process. The actual adjudication of the premium processing cases will not start until May 20. Applications not selected in the lottery will be returned to the employers with the filing fees. USCIS is expected to begin working on regular processed cases by early to mid-June.
