The attached press release from USCIS announces that the Service received at least 150,000 H-1B petitions toward the maximum allocation of 65,000 H-1B petitions for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2007.
It describes the “random selection process” that will be used to determine which of the 150,000 cases will be accepted for further processing. The cases not selected will be rejected and returned with their filing fees.
The press release is only definite with respect to those cases subject to the “regular” H-1B cap, and says that USCIS does not yet know how may cases it has received toward the separate cap of 20,000 for holders of Master’s and higher degrees from U.S. universities.
The press release also states that USCIS will take “several weeks” to determine which of the cases are selected for further processing. It is not clear whether USCIS will return some or all I-907 Premium Processing Request forms and the premium processing fee to petitioners, as it appears that USCIS will take longer than 15 days to determine whether or not the H-1B petitions can be accepted at all.
We will continue to monitor the situation and provide more detail as soon as it becomes available.