USCIS Completes The H-1B Cap Random Selection Process For FY 2017

On April 7, 2016, USCIS announced that it has received enough H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap of 65,000 visas for fiscal year (FY) 2017. USCIS has also received more than the limit of 20,000 H-1B petitions filed under the advanced degree exemption, also known as the master's cap.

Yesterday USCIS announced that, on April 9, it used a computer-generated random selection process to select enough petitions to meet the 65,000 general-category cap and the 20,000 cap under the advanced degree exemption. USCIS also confirmed its receipt of more than 236,000 H-1B petitions during the filing period, which began April 1 and ended April 7. This is slightly higher than the number of filings received last year (233,000).