Fourth year in a row, cap reached in the first week.
WASHINGTON: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it reached the annual H-1B cap of 65,000 visas for fiscal year 2017. The agency has also received more than 20,000 — which is the limit — H-1B petitions filed under the U.S. advanced degree exemption, it said in a press release.
USCIS will now select the petitions through a random computer-generated lottery process.
The agency will first select candidates for the advanced degree exemption and all unselected petitions from that category “will become part of the random selection process for the 65,000 general cap,” it said.
“Due to the high number of petitions, USCIS is not yet able to announce the date it will conduct the random selection process,” the release said.
In the meantime, the agency will “continue to accept and process petitions that are otherwise exempt from the cap,” it added.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, for the first time since 2008, USCIS reached the statutory H-1B cap of 65,000 for fiscal year 2015 within the first week of the filing period when it was instituted last year.
USCIS started receiving the petitions on April 1. This is the fourth year in a row that the congressionally mandate cap has been reached in the first week.
Fiscal year | The date the congressionally mandated cap was reached |
2010 | December 21, 2009 |
2011 | January 26, 2010 |
2012 | November 22, 2011 |
2013 | June 7, 2012 |
2014 | April 5, 2013 |
2015 | April 7, 2014 |
2016 | April 7, 2015 |
2017 | April 7, 2016 |
Source: USCIS