Today USCIS announced that it received approximately 172,500 H-1B petitions in the H-1B cap filing period between April 1 and April 7, 2014. USCIS has completed the computer-generated lottery to select the petitions that will be processed under this year’s cap.
The lottery was first completed for the petitions eligible for the 20,000 H-1Bs available under the U.S. Master’s Degree cap; any petitions not selected in that lottery were then included in the lottery for the 65,000 available H-1Bs in the regular cap.
USCIS announced that premium processing will begin no later than April 28, 2014. They will begin the process of returning petitions and filing fee checks over the coming weeks. We are estimating that we should have confirmation on nearly all cases by the end of May.
Graham Adair will begin notifying clients as soon as filing fee checks are deposited by USCIS. Please contact us directly at info@grahamadair.com with questions.