USCIS announced today that it has received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap for fiscal year (FY) 2015, including more than 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of persons exempt from the cap under the advanced degree exemption. Today was the last day USCIS would accept H-1B petitions subject to the FY 2015 cap (including the advanced degree exemption). See USCIS’ Announcement here.
Before running the computer-generated process which will randomly select those petitions to be accepted for processing , USCIS must complete initial intake for all filings received during the filing period (April 1 – 7, 2014). Due to the high number of petitions, USCIS is not yet able to announce the date on which it will conduct the random selection process.
After the random selection process is complete, USCIS will reject and return the filing, with fees, for all cap-subject petitions that are not selected, unless found to be a duplicate filing. Until this process is complete, it is not possible to know whether any particular application has, in fact, been accepted for processing.