The United States Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS) has announced on April 6, 2018 that the H-1B cap has been reached before the April 7, 2018 deadline. As such, the agency will reject any cap subject petitions received after April 7th. This means that the government has received over the congressionally-mandated 85,000 fiscal year visa cap. This 85,000 includes 65,000 for regular cap and 20,000 spots for advanced degree. Although we do not currently know how many petitions were filed, in 2017, USCIS logged 199,000 applications in total.
The government will now run two separate lotteries, one for the one for regular cap and one for advanced degrees. Employers whose petitions are selected for processing should begin to get filing receipts within weeks after the lotteries are run. Cases not selected in the lottery will be returned to petitioners with their filing fees, but the timing of returns is not yet known. The petitions that are selected will be adjudicated but do not expect results any time soon as premium processing has been suspended. To learn more about the H-1B visa and its requirements, please click here.
