On May 15, 2018, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it had completed its electronic data entry for receipt of all H-1B Cap-Subject Petitions selected for Fiscal Year 2019.
USCIS previously announced on April 11, 2018 that it had completed the random selection process for H-1B Cap-Subject Petitions.
The May 15 announcement indicates that each of those H-1B Cap-Subject Petitions which were selected under this “cap” have now been receipted and entered into the USCIS system. USCIS will now begin returning H-1B Petition filings which were not selected under the cap.
The annual cap selection process is due to the statutory limit on the number of initial H-1B visas which may be issued each year. There is an annual limit of 65,000 new H-1B visas, plus an additional 20,000 visas for beneficiaries’ with U.S. Master’s degrees.
Because it anticipates receiving many more H-1B Petitions annually than there are visas available, USCIS conducts a random selection process in the first week of April each year for H-1B visas to be issued beginning the next Fiscal Year.
USCIS received 190,098 H-1B Cap-Subject Petitions for Fiscal Year 2019. This is down from 199,000 for Fiscal Year 2018 and 236,000 for Fiscal Year 2017.