Visa Lawyer Blog

Articles Tagged with lottery

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Today, April 7, 2015, USCIS announced that it has reached the H-1B cap for FY2016. Before running the lottery, USCIS will complete initial intake for all filings received during the filing period.

Initial intake/review will sort out multiple or duplicate H-1B petitions filed by an employer for one employer.  Regulations require USCIS to deny or revoke those multiple or duplicative petitions that an employer files for the same H-1B worker, and they will not return or refund the filing fees.

USCIS will first randomly select 20,000 petitions from the U.S. Master’s cap petitions that will be processed. All unselected advanced degree petitions will become part of the random selection process for the 65,000 general limit. Rejected petitions will be returned to the attorney or employer along with the filing fees (except for multiple or duplicative filings by an employer for an employee). Due to the high number of petitions, USCIS is not yet able to announce when it will conduct the random selection process.

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Now that the H-1B cases have been filed, we are anxiously waiting to get the news from USCIS on the cap count.

Last year, USCIS announced on April 5 that it received approximately 124,000 H-1B petitions during the five day filing period, including petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption. Then, on April 7, 2013, USCIS used a computer-generated random selection process (commonly known as a “lottery”) to select for processing a sufficient number of petitions needed to meet the caps of 65,000 for the general category and 20,000 under the advanced degree exemption limit.

What to Expect This Year

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