On April 5, 2019, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has received a sufficient number of new H-1B visa petitions to reach the regular cap for fiscal year 2020 (FY2020). The statutory cap is 65,000 H-1B visas, minus up to 6,800 H-1Bs allocated to citizens of Chile and Singapore under the US free trade agreements with those countries.

USCIS will next determine if has received at least 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of individuals exempt from the cap under the advanced degree exemption (commonly called the "master's cap"). It is likely that the master's cap is also exhausted.

USCIS will reject any H-1B petition received after April 5, 2019 that is subject to the FY2020 regular cap. For more information, see USCIS: H-1B Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Cap Season.

This is the seventh year in a row that the H-1B regular cap was exhausted during the initial five-day filing period. It continues the trend that existed before the economic recession began in 2008, with a limited number of employers able to secure H-1B status for employees and a large number of employers foreclosed from the H-1B category for 18 months or more.

All petitions received between April 1 and April 5, 2019 will be entered into a computer-generated random selection process, known as the lottery. USCIS will first randomly select the 65,000 petitions for the regular cap. The 20,000 petitions for the master's cap will be selected from the petitions filed during the filing period and not selected for the regular cap. The order of petitions selected has changed from prior years in an effort to maximize the selection of petitions for foreign workers with a US master's or higher degree. USCIS has not yet announced the date of the lottery, and is not currently providing the total number of petitions received.

USCIS previously announced that premium processing of cap-subject H-1B petitions will occur in two phases. For information related to FY2020 H-1B filings, including the new selection procedures and premium processing, see Legal Updates, DHS Publishes Final Rule on Filing and Selection Processes for H-1B Cap Cases; Preparing for the FY2020 H-1B Cap Season and USCIS on Premium Processing for the FY2020 H-1B Cap Season.

USCIS will continue to accept petitions that are otherwise exempt from the cap. H-1B petitions exempt from the cap include:

For more information on the H-1B cap, see Practice Note, The H-1B Nonimmigrant Visa Classification.