Business Immigration Insights

As widely anticipated, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced yesterday that it has received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to meet both the regular cap (65,000) and the advanced degree cap (20,000) for Fiscal Year 2016.  USCIS received close to 233,000 petitions during the FY2016 filing window, which ran through the first five business days of April.  By comparison, the USCIS received 172,000 for FY2015.

USCIS also announced that it has completed the computer-generated random selection process – popularly known as the “H-1B lottery” – and selected the petitions it will process under each cap.  For those that included the optional “premium processing” fee, the 15-day premium period will begin on Monday, April 27.

Petitions that were not selected in the lottery will be returned by postal mail to the petitioner or, if a G-28 Notice of Entry of Appearance was filed, to the petitioner’s legal representative.