USCIS Reached the FY19 H-1B Cap; Premium Processing Suspended Again

During the week of April 2, 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was accepting H-1B cap subject petitions for the fiscal year (FY) 2019. While it is yet unknown how many petitions were received during last week, USCIS announced last Friday that it has reached the congressionally-mandated cap of 85,000 petitions.

Similar to last year, USCIS temporarily suspended the premium processing for all H-1B cap subject petitions -- both regular cap (foreign nationals with bachelor’s degrees) and master’s cap (foreign nationals with U.S. master’s degree). The suspension is expected to last until September 10, 2018. During this time, USCIS will continue to accept premium process requests for all other H-1B petitions, that are not subject to the FY 2019 cap and for petitions that meet “expedite criteria”.