Just two weeks after the closing of the FY2018 H-1B cap, USCIS announced today that it received 199,000 cap-subject H-1B petitions for the 2018 Fiscal Year.
As reported in the April 7th issue of the EIG Dispatch, this year USCIS received more than the congressionally mandated 65,000 visas for the general category and the 20,000 for the advanced degree exemption. As in prior years, USCIS will first randomly select 20,000 petitions filed under the U.S. Master’s cap; all remaining unselected Master’s cap petitions will then fall into the Regular cap, from which USCIS will randomly select an additional 65,000 petitions.
The number of petitions filed this year is lower than the prior two years.
Sources: USCIS, CNN
Since USCIS only reports the total number of cap petitions filed, without distinguishing between Master’s and Regular cap, the odds for each petition is unknown. EIG expects USCIS to start issuing cap selection notifications by May.