Alert: FY2017 H-1B Cap Demand Among Highest Ever; Random Lottery Just Completed

Our office just learned that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has completed the intake and processing of all of the fiscal year (FY2017) H-1B cap petitions.    According to USCIS, there were over 236,000 H-1B cap petitions filed during the April 1st-7th filing period.   This indicates that the number of H-1B cap filings this year is almost the same as the number of H-1B cap filings during last year’s cap season (233,000); nonetheless, this marks historically high H-1B cap demand.

The Lottery Has Been Completed

USCIS also just announced that they have just completed the computer-generated random selection process, or lottery, to select these petitions which would be reviewed to meet the 65,000 general-category cap and the 20,000 cap under the advanced degree exemption.      The process involved running the random selection for the advanced degree exemption (20,000) first with all remaining nonselected advanced degree petitions then becoming part of the random selection process for the 65,000 limit.

This means that the chance of an H-1B petition to be selected under the random H-1B lottery is around 30% (slightly higher for US master’s degree or higher holders).

Premium Processing 15-day Clock to Begin May 16, 2016

H-1B cap petitioners who requested premium processing should note that the 15-day premium processing clock would not start until May 16, 2016.

Next Steps and Timelines

Premium Processing Email Receipts.  USCIS will first focus on processing the selected premium processing H-1B cap petitions.   We expect that over the next 1-3 weeks we will start seeing email receipt notifications for premium processing cases.

Regular Processing Receipt Notices.  Shortly afterwards, perhaps around late April or early/mid-May, we should start seeing paper receipt notices indicating acceptance under the lottery for regular processing H-1B cap cases.

H-1B Lottery Rejection Notices.  The H-1B lottery rejection notices are likely to be processed last, and given the fact that there will be about 150,000 such rejection packages, we expect that rejection packages will be sent out in late May or even June.

H-1B Cap-Exempt Petitions Still Accepted

It should be noted that USCIS continues to accept cap-exempt H-1B petitions.   These are petitions generally filed by universities and non-profit research organizations (read more about cap-exempt employers).  Also, H-1B extensions and H-1B transfers and concurrent H-1B petitions for a second employer are cap-exempt and can be filed at any time and outside of the H-1B cap filing season.

Conclusion

The FY2017 H-1B cap numbers are not very surprising to our office based on the demand we saw during the January-March H-1B cap preparation period.    The reasons for the high H-1B demand this year may be caused by the improving economy.   Another reason may have been the self-fulfilling prediction by USCIS in March that they expect that the cap would be reached during the first week.

We will continue to monitor developments related to this year’s H-1B cap filing season.    In the meantime, please feel free to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to obtain developments on this and related topics. If our office can be of any help, please feel free to contact us.