H-1B Cap Hit For Fiscal Year 2017

On April 7, 2016, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it had received more than enough H-1B petitions to meet the numerical limit for fiscal year 2017 cap-subject H-1B visas, which includes both the 65,000 general H-1B cap petitions as well as the 20,000 U.S. Master's degree H-1B petitions filed on behalf of individuals with U.S. advanced degrees. This is the fourth year in a row that the cap was reached in the first five business days in which one could file, triggering a lottery.

USCIS indicates it will soon begin executing the computer-generated random selection process for all cap-subject petitions received. First, a lottery will be held to randomly select which U.S. Master's degree cases will be counted toward the 20,000 limit. Once that is determined, the remainder of the U.S. Master's degree cases will be added to the pool of general H-1B cap petitions, and USCIS will execute the second random selection process to determine which