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USCIS Runs H-1B Lottery

April 14, 2008

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today announced that they have completed their computer-generated random selection process to select which fiscal year 2009 (FY 2009) H-1B petitions will be eligible for adjudication. USCIS had previously announced on April 10 that it had received a preliminary number of 163,000 H-1B visa petitions seeking one of the 65,000 H-1B visas available for fiscal year 2009. Of these petitions more than 31,200 were applications for the 20,000 H-1B visas available exclusively to holders of U.S. Master’s degrees.

USCIS first ran a lottery on petitions qualifying for the 20,000 advanced degree exemption. Those not selected in the advanced degree lottery were added to the general H-1B pool of petitions for the 65,000 cap and were run in the second lottery. In order to conduct the lottery, USCIS stated that they assigned “unique numerical identifiers” to each of the 163,000 petitions received on the first five days of the eligible filing period.

According to the USCIS announcement:

  • Employers whose petitions were selected in the lottery “should receive a receipt notice dated no later than June 2, 2008;”
  • USCIS will return unselected petitions with the fee(s) to petitioners, except duplicate filings will be returned without the fee;
  • USCIS anticipates completing the total adjudication process in about eight to ten weeks;
  • For cases selected in the lottery that were filed for premium processing, the 15-day premium processing period began yesterday, April 14, the day the lottery was complete;
  • To account for possible denials or withdrawn petitions, USCIS has “wait-listed” extra H-1B petitions, which they will retain until a decision is made on whether they can be processed or not. Petitioners in this category will receive a letter from USCIS informing them of their status. Wait-listed petitions will either receive a receipt notice or will receive the returned petition with fees within six to eight weeks.

To view the USCIS announcement, click here.

If you have any questions about the H-1B cap or selection process, please contact your T&S attorney.

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