USCIS Reaches FY 2017 H-1B Cap

USCIS announced today that it received enough H-1B petitions to reach the H-1B cap for fiscal year 2017.  USCIS has also received more than the limit of 20,000 H-1B petitions filed under the U.S. advanced degree exemption.

USCIS will use a computer-generated process, also known as the lottery, to randomly select the petitions that will be processed.  USCIS will first randomly select petitions for the U.S. advanced degree exemption. All unselected advanced degree petitions will become part of the random selection process for the 65,000 general cap. The agency will return all unselected cap-subject petitions, including filing fees.

Before running the lottery, USCIS will complete initial intake for all filings received during the filing period, which ended April 7. Due to the high number of petitions, USCIS is not yet able to announce the date it will conduct the random selection process.