U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that as of Friday, April 5, it had received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the cap for this year and will not accept any additional cap-subject petitions.
Since the cap was reached within the first week, all cap-subject petitions will be placed in a lottery. Petitions eligible for the “master’s cap” will first be placed in a pool for random selection for one of the 20,000 available “master’s cap” H-1Bs. Those not selected in that lottery will be placed with all others in the pool for the “regular cap” of 65,000 H-1Bs. Those who do not receive an H-1B in this year’s allotment will have their petitions and filing fees returned. USCIS has not yet announced a timeline for the selection process, but historically the process has taken several weeks. It has also not disclosed the total number of petitions received.