USCIS Completes H-1B Cap Subject Petitions Selections

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have announced on May 15, 2018 that it has completed data entry for all FY 2019 H-1B cap-subject petitions. This year, a total of 190,098 H-1B cap petitions were received, of this, 95,885 were submitted towards the cap exemption of 20,000 for holders of U.S. advanced degrees and 94,210 were submitted towards the standard quota of 65,000. The agency ran two lotteries on April 11 to select which cases will be processed to completion, which has just been completed. At this point, USCIS will begin to return all H-1B cap-subject petitions that were not selected. Petitioners should expect to receive any unselected petitions in the following weeks however USCIS cannot provide a definite time frame for when all of the petitions will be sent.

Additionally, USCIS may transfer some H-1B petitions between the Vermont Service Center and the California Service Center in order to balance the distribution and work load of the Centers. If your case has been transferred, you will receive a mailed notification. After receiving the notification, you should send all future correspondence to the center processing your petition. To learn more about the H-1B visa and its requirements, please click here.