In less than five days after it started receiving applications for H-1B visas for the fiscal year 2017 beginning October 1, 2016, the US today said that the Congressional-mandated cap for the visas has been reached.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has reached the congressionally-mandated H-1B cap of 60,000 for the fiscal year 2017, the agency said in a statement.
It has also received more than the limit of 20,000 H-1B petitions filed under the US advanced degree exemption, USCIS said. It started accepting H-1B applications on April 1.
In its statement, USCIS said it will use a computer-generated process, also known as the lottery, to randomly select the petitions needed to meet the caps of 65,000 visas for the general category and 20,000 for the advanced degree exemption.
USCIS will first randomly select petitions for the advanced degree exemption.
All unselected advanced degree petitions will become part of the random selection process for the 65,000 general cap.
The agency will reject and return filing fees for all unselected cap-subject petitions that are not duplicate filings, the official statement said.
Before running the lottery, USCIS will complete initial intake for all filings received during the filing period, which ended April 7.
Due to the high number of petitions, USCIS is not yet able to announce the date it will conduct the random selection process, the statement said adding that it will continue to accept and process petitions that are otherwise exempt from the cap.
