On May 4, 2015, USCIS announced that it has completed data entry of all FY2016 H-1B Cap-Subject petitions that were selected in the lottery. USCIS has said that they will now start returning all of the Cap-Reject cases and they have not announced a time frame for completing the return of Cap-Reject cases, given the high volume of filings.
Receipt Notices
Premium Receipts
As we had informed earlier, all of the Premium Processing Case Receipts were received by email before April 27 and Premium adjudications started promptly from April 27. We have also been receiving numerous requests for evidence on the Premium Cases, as was expected. So if your case was a Premium Processing Case and you have not yet received a receipt notice to date, then it will be safe to assume that your case has not been selected in the lottery and will be sent back.
Regular Case Receipts
Based on GLF’s experience from prior years with H-1B cap cases, we expect that it will take another 7-8 days to receive by US mail all of the receipt notices from the data entry that was completed today. We anticipate receiving all of the regular receipts by May 13. If a receipt is not received by May 15, 2015, then it will be safe to assume that your case has not been selected in the lottery and will be sent back.
Return of Cap Reject Cases
At GLF, we anticipate that it may take as much as another 4-5 weeks to receive all of the cap-reject cases back from USCIS. We anticipate that the selection rate in this year’s lottery will be about 1 in 3 or 33%.
In the meantime, we request employers to check whether your filing fee checks have been cashed by USCIS, as that is the fastest way to find out if your case has been selected in the lottery. If a filing fee check has been cashed, then you are assured that the case was selected in the lottery and the back side of the canceled check will even have the case receipt number.
We at GLF are sincerely thankful for your continued support and the trust that you have placed in us during this busy H-1B cap season. Thank You!