On April 1, 2019, USCIS opened the Fiscal Year (“FY”) 2020 H-1B Cap. The cap was open for the mandatory five business days, at which time on April 5th, 2019, USCIS confirmed that it had received 201,011 Petitions for the:
– 65,000 available regular H-1Bs
– 20,000 available U.S. advanced degree H-1Bs
On April 10, USCIS conducted a computer-generated random lottery to select enough H-1B petitions to meet the congressionally-mandated regular cap and the U.S. advanced degree exemption for FY 2020. On April 12th, USCIS started issuing electronic receipts for H-1B Petitions that were filed using premium processing. On April 22, 2019, Petitioners started receiving receipts for H-1B Petitions filed under standard processing. Petitioners will continue to receive receipts over the next few weeks until USCIS announces that the program is closed and that it will be returning Petitions that were not selected.
Please contact SPS Immigration if you have questions regarding the FY 2020 H-1B Cap process.