On April 12, 2016, USCIS announced that the agency had received a total of 236,000 H-1B cap subject petitions during the filing period which began April 1, 2016 and ended April 7, 2016. These numbers are well beyond the allotment of available visas under both the regular statutory cap to 65,000 and the additional 20,000 US master’s cap exemption. In addition, the agency confirms that it has completed the computer-generated random selection process lottery as of April 9, 2016. The agency has conducted the selection process to determine which cases will be accepted for processing and which will be rejected.
All received petitions were assigned a computer generated number. The cases submitted under the 20,000 US master’s cap exemption were selected through a random selection process (lottery). Those not selected were then included in a similar lottery for the regular 65,000 cap cases. USCIS has begun issuing receipt notices on selected cases however it will take the agency time to issue all the receipts. After all receipts are issued, the USCIS will then begin to return the petitions that were not selected through the lottery. All returned cases will be returned with the filing fees. A rejected cap case is not the same as a benefit denial.
The USCIS had announced on March 16, 2016, that it would begin processing H-1B cap cases filed under premium processing no later than May 16. This means that the processing time “clock” may not start until that date.
As receipt notices and rejected packages are received, we will notify our employer clients and their employees. Until we have received either a receipt or a rejections, we cannot assume that a case was or was not selected for processing.
