H-1B Cap Reached!

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it has received sufficient H-1B cases (both bachelor's degree general category and US master's degree level) to reach the annual fiscal year 2015 cap numbers. (The 2015 fiscal year begins on October 1, 2014, and the caps are set at 65,000 for the bachelor's degree general category cases and 20,000 for master's degree cases). The petitions received will be entered into a lottery and randomly selected via computer process. USCIS notes that while a date for the lottery is not set yet, the master's degree lottery will take place first and any master's cases not selected will then be entered in the bachelor's level lottery. Stand by for the date the lottery will occur.

For more information about the H-1B cap, see Protima's post. And for all the gritty details on the H-1B visa (along with E-3, TN, and H-1B1 and a super helpful chart), see Lizzie B.'s post.

UPDATE: USCIS announced that a lottery was conducted on April 10, 2014 for the approximately 172,500 H-1B cap petitions received beginning April 1. For cases not selected in the lottery, USCIS will reject and return the petition with filing fees, unless it is found to be a duplicate filing. 

Also noted in press release: for H-1B cap cases filed via premium processing, USCIS will begin the fifteen calendar day processing no later than April 28. And, of course, USCIS is normally processing H-1B petitions not subject to the cap.