04.12.16
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ("USCIS") just announced that it has completed its lottery for the limited number of H-1B visas available for Fiscal Year 2017. This year, USCIS received 236,000 petitions within the first five days of the filing season. Regulations indicate that if they receive more than the allotment of 85,000 H-1B visas (20,000 for those with advanced U.S. degrees and 65,000 for anyone else who was not chosen among the 20,000) then a lottery will be conducted. On April 9, USCIS used a computer-generated lottery process to select enough petitions to meet the 85,000 available visas. USCIS has just started issuing electronic receipts for those H-1B petitions filed via Premium Processing today. USCIS has indicated that they will attempt to complete processing H-1B petitions filed via premium processing by May 16, 2016. There is no proposed timeline for the rest of the petitions. For those petitions not chosen in the lottery, USCIS will reject and return all unselected petitions with their filing fees.Clark Lau LLC will notify you once we receive any news from USCIS regarding your particular petition. Despite the cap having been reached, USCIS will continue to receive H-1B petitions for those individuals who have been previously granted an H-1B and are now seeking a change of employer, whose employer is exempt from the visa limitation, or who are seeking an extension of existing H-1B status. Please contact Clark Lau LLC if you need to file an H-1B petition to determine whether you can file and whether there are any other options.