This year USCIS received over 236,000 H-1B cap-subject petitions during the filing period, including petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption.  USCIS has now announced that as of May 2, 2016, all data entry for fiscal year 2017 H-1B cap-subject petitions selected in the computer-generated random process has been completed.

USCIS will now begin returning all H-1B cap-subject petitions that were not selected. Because of the high volume of filings, USCIS has reported that it is unable to provide a definite time frame for returning these petitions. USCIS also stated that it will issue an announcement once all the unselected petitions have been returned.

Due to extreme backlogs and as part of the Workload Transfer Process, USCIS has been transferring various cases, including I-129 H-1B petitions from the Vermont Service Center to the Nebraska Service Center.  In this most recent update, USCIS confirmed that it will also transfer some H-1B cap subject petitions from the Vermont Service Center to the California Service Center to balance the distribution of cap cases.  You can follow these updates on USCIS’s Workload Transfer Updates page.