United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on April 7, 2017 that the annual H-1B quota for the regular 65,000 bachelor’s degree cap and the 20,000 U.S. master’s degree cap has been met for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018. USCIS has not yet announced the exact number of H-1B applications received. Once all the H-1B applications are counted, USCIS will share this information in the coming weeks. Likewise, USCIS will also confirm when it will complete its lottery (computerized random selection) of H-1B applications in the coming weeks. USCIS will reject and return the filing fees for all unselected H-1B cap cases that are not duplicate filings.
As of April 3, 2017, USCIS has temporarily suspended premium processing up to 6 months for all H-1B applications, both cap and non-cap cases. Thus, all cases selected under the lottery will be processed under the regular processing timeline.
Stay tuned for further updates from USCIS.