In honor of April 1 being the first day that H-1B cap-subject petitions can be filed, here is some information about the H-1B program from the American Immigration Council. The first link is a fact sheet. The second link is a column about the cap and the possibility of increasing it.

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Cap Subject H-1B petitions must be submitted in the first five business days of April. A total of 85,000 cap subject H-1B visas are available: 65,000 in the regular cap and 20,000 for the US Master’s Cap – meaning that the specialty occupation requires a Master’s degree and the beneficiary holds a Master’s degree from a US university. Cap subject H-1B petitions submitted for Fiscal Year 2017 must have a start date of October 1, 2016.

USCIS has announced that it will begin adjudicating petitions on May 16. The lottery process needs to be executed before adjudications take place. Last year, the lottery occurred in the middle of April. Receipt notices were issued for cases that were selected under the cap and then lottery rejection notices came trickling in slowly after that. If the H-1B petition processing begins by May 16, that means a receipt notice should be issued before then to inform the petitioner that the case has been selected under the cap. If premium processing is selected and the $1,225 fee is paid, that means the case will be adjudicated by May 31. USCIS will announce when overseas beneficiaries can begin the consular process, if the underlying H-1B petition is approved by USCIS.

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The time for filing H-1B lottery subject applications is approaching. The first five weekdays of April is when USCIS is accepting H-1B applications for the lottery. It will play the lottery shortly after that and begin issuing receipt notices and rejections for the lottery. There is a limited cap of 65,000 plus an addition 20,000 reserved for US Master’s.

If you are considering filing an H-1B application for a foreign national in a specialty occupation (a requirement of the H-1B visa), now is the time to act. An H-1B petition can be cap-exempt, meaning not subject to the lottery, if there are certain approved affiliations or if the employee in question has already been accepted under the cap. Otherwise, the petition is subject to the cap and must be filed in two weeks. The beneficiaries of accepted and approved H-1B applications will be able to work in H-1B status on October 1, 2016, the first day of the fiscal year.

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