CIS announced that it completed its H-1B lottery selection process. CIS confirmed that it received 190,098 filings, which is lower than recent years. I am not sure how they count and process the lottery selections so quickly, but the logistics process must be impressive.

USCIS’ announcement reads:

"On April 11, USCIS used a computer-generated random selection process to select enough H-1B
petitions to meet the congressionally-mandated cap and the U.S. advanced degree exemption,
known as the master’s cap, for fiscal year (FY) 2019.

USCIS received 190,098 H-1B petitions during the filing period, which began April 2, including
petitions filed for the advanced degree exemption. USCIS announced on April 6, that it had
received enough H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap of 65,000 and the master’s cap of
20,000. USCIS will reject and return all unselected petitions with their filing fees unless the
petition is a prohibited multiple filing.

USCIS conducted the selection process for the master’s cap first. All unselected master’s cap
petitions then became part of the random selection process for the 65,000 cap."

And now we anxiously wait for receipt notices, or worse the rejection package.  For those who are not selected under the lottery process, there still may be other nonimmigrant visa options such as O-1, TN, E-2 or STEM-OPT. Feel free to contact us any time to discuss these options.