On April 12, 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it had completed the computer-generated random selection process for fiscal year 2019 H-1B cap cases. At the same time, USCIS disclosed that it had received 190,098 H-1B petitions during the relevant filing period, a drop from the 199,000 received last year. However, this still was more than enough to fill both the regular and master’s cap quotas of 65,000 and 20,000, respectively. As a result, USCIS will now issue receipts for the selected cases and return all unselected petitions with filing fees.
USCIS will continue to accept and permit premium processing of H-1B petitions that are not counted toward the congressionally-mandated cap on new H-1B petitions. This includes H-1B petitions to extend or change the terms of employment and H-1B petitions allowing the worker to change employers.
