USCIS Receives 172,500 H-1B Cap Petitions and Conducts Lottery

On April 10, 2014, United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it received approximately 172,500 H-1B petitions to meet both the Master’s and regular H-1B quotas (or “caps”) for Fiscal Year 2015, which begins on October 1, 2014.  This means that USCIS received more than double the number of available H-1B petitions in the first week of filing, and that more than 20,000 of these petitions were filed under the Master’s cap.

In addition, USCIS announced that they completed a computer-generated random selection process for all cap-subject filings received from Tuesday, April 1 through Monday, April 7, 2014 to determine which filings to adjudicate.  USCIS first conducted the lottery process for H-1B petitions subject to the Master’s cap, which sets aside 20,000 H-1B visas for holders of U.S. Master’s degrees or higher degrees.  Any Master’s cap petitions not selected in the Master’s lottery were eligible for selection in the regular H-1B lottery, effectively providing two opportunities for an H-1B visa.  USCIS will now begin the process of sending Receipt Notices for petitions selected in the lottery while rejecting and returning petitions, together with the associated filing fees, that were not selected in the lottery.

For additional background information on the H-1B visa program and the cap, please see our previous Client Alert titled “H-1B Work Permit Filings: Will You Beat the Cap?”

Jason E. Burritt is a partner in Seyfarth’s Washington, D.C. office and Gabriel Mozes is an associate in the firm’s Atlanta office.  If you would like further information, please contact your Seyfarth attorney with whom you work, or Jason E. Burritt at jburritt@seyfarth.com or Gabriel Mozes at gmozes@seyfarth.com.