USCIS announces completion of H-1B cap lottery, return of unselected petitions

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced today that it has completed data entry for H-1B cap petitions for fiscal year 2018 that were chosen in the lottery and will begin returning petitions that were not selected.

Key points:

• Due to the high volume of filings, the agency is unable to give a timeline for return of unselected petitions.
• USCIS will announce when all unselected petitions are returned and is requesting that people not contact the agency until they have received a receipt notice or the return of an unselected petition.
• The agency also announced that it is transferring some H-1B cap petitions from the Vermont Service Center to the California Service Center to distribute workloads more evenly.

BAL Analysis: Employers and individuals are reminded that premium processing for all H-1B petitions remains suspended, which may delay receipts. They should expect returns of unselected petitions to continue for the next few months. The agency will notify petitioners whose cases are transferred from the Vermont Service Center to the California Service Center, as all future correspondence will go to the location handling the case.

This alert has been provided by the BAL U.S. Practice group. For additional information, please contact BerryApplemanLeiden@bal.com.

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