United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) completed lottery selection for H-1B visa applicants on April 13, using a computer-generated random selection process. The agency began the selection process with advanced degree exemptions, which were capped at 20,000 for the fiscal year (FY) 2016. Unselected advanced degree petitions were then added to the general pool of H-1B applicants, which was capped at 65,000.
On April 7, the agency announced that they had received enough H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap on general H-1B petitions as well as the cap on advanced degree exemption H-1B petitions, also know as the master’s cap.
USCIS received approximately 233,000 H-1B applications for FY 2016, up from 172,000 applications for 2015. For those applicants that were not selected, the agency will reject and return unselected petitions along with their filing fees unless a petition is found to be a duplicate filing. For those applications that opted for premium processing, USCIS will begin processing those applications no later than May 11, 2015.
If your H-1B visa application was denied, there are many alternative pathways to maintain your legal status. For more information, please contact us at (888) 827-8880 or email us at [email protected]