U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it
has received approximately 163,000 H-1B petitions to
meet the congressionally mandated cap for fiscal
year 2009. More than 31,200 of those petitions were
for the U.S. Masters cap.
As announced earlier, USCIS will use a random
selection process for all cases. Since the cap was
met for U.S. Masters quota, USCIS will first conduct
the random selection process for such petitions
before it begins random selection for petitions to
be counted toward the 65,000 cap.
Before running the random
selection process, USCIS will complete initial data
entry for all filings received during the acceptable
filing period ending on April 7, 2008 (within the
first five business days of April 1, 2008). Due to
the high number of petitions received, the USCIS
anticipates that the computerized random selection
process will take place some time next week
beginning with the selection of the 20,000 petitions
under the U.S. Masters cap. Those petitions not
selected under the U.S. Masters cap will join the
selection process for the cap-subject 65,000 quota.
USCIS will
reject and return filing fees for all petitions not
randomly selected, unless found to be a duplicate.
USCIS will handle duplicate filings in accordance
with the interim final rule published on March 24,
2008 in the Federal Register.
It is thus clear that the U.S. Masters cap
filers will know whether they have been selected in
the random selection process ahead of the regular
cap filers. Cancelled filing fee checks accessible
through the online banking systems are a clear
indication that the case has been selected.
If you have any questions or need more information, please free to call us.
