On April 6, 2018, USCIS announced that it had received a sufficient number of H-1B cap petitions during the period between April 2, 2018 and April 6, 2018 to meet the congressionally mandated statutory cap of 65,000 and the U.S. advanced degree exemption (or Master’s cap) of 20,000 for Fiscal Year 2019.
On April 11, 2018, USCIS announced that it has completed the H-1B cap lottery—a computer generated random selection process to select enough of the 190,098 submitted petitions to meet the cap. USCIS first conducted the Master’s cap selection process and then added all unselected Master’s cap petitions to the selection process for the regular 65,000 cap.
Over the next several weeks, USCIS will issue receipt notices for those cases that were selected in the lottery and will return unselected petitions along with their filing fees to the petitioner (unless the petition is a multiple filing).