On Friday, April 5th, USCIS announced that it received a sufficient number of petitions to reach the 65,000 H-1B visa regular cap for the 2020 fiscal year. USCIS will next determine if a sufficient number of petitions to meet the 20,000 H-1B visa U.S. advanced degree exemption, known as the Master’s cap, has been met. As a reminder, this is the first year that the order by which USCIS selected-1B petitions under the H-1B regular cap and the Master’s cap was reversed.

For those petitions that were not selected, USCIS will reject and return the filing fees, as long as the petition is not considered a prohibited multiple filing. USCIS has stated that to ensure fair and orderly distribution of available H-1B visas, multiple or duplicative petitions filed by an employer, including related entities, for the same H-1B worker will be denied or revoked and filing fees will not be refunded.