On April 12, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it had completed the H-1B cap lottery selection process.
Of significance to note: USCIS received 190,098 petitions this year, which is 8,902 fewer than last year. This year's H-1B submissions were at the lowest rate of H-1B cap cases filed in the past six years.
As usual, USCIS did not disclose a breakdown of how many petitions fell under the advanced-degree exemption (master's cap). USCIS conducts its random lottery for the master's cap first. Cases that were not selected in the master's cap were included in the regular cap lottery selection. Any H-1B cases not selected in the random lottery process will be returned over the next few months with uncashed USCIS filing fees.
Over the next several weeks, U.S. employers and attorneys of record will receive fee receipts signifying that an H-1B case was accepted pursuant to the random lottery and will be adjudicated by USCIS in due course. USCIS has suspended premium processing, the option of expedited processing of H-1B petitions, until September 10, 2018.
