On April 13th, USCIS announced that it had used its computer-based random selection process for cap-subject H-1B petitions. It is now almost a full week later and a lot of interested parties are wondering whether the fact that there is no receipt for a given petition means that it was not selected for processing.

The answer to the above question is that we simply do not know. To this date, we continue to receive receipts for petitions that were filed via Premium Processing (colleagues also report that they continue to receive receipts.) This tells us that if a receipt has not been received, there is still hope that the petition may have been randomly selected. Note that if we are still receiving Premium Processing receipts, it would be logical to infer that for petitions that were not filed using Premium Processing, receipts may be in transit via regular mail.

Until such time as a petition is officially rejected, or until such time as USCIS makes an announcement stating that if a receipt has not been received, the petition was not randomly selected, our opinion is that there is still hope a given petition is in the running for the H-1B. Likewise, we would also caution our clients and readers that just because a receipt has been received, we would not make the jump to conclude that the H-1B will follow. We will not assume anything until we have an H-1B approval or a rejected petition in our hands. This may be a very conservative approach, but the reality is that USCIS makes mistakes. Consequently, we do not believe in jumping to conclusions.

Concerning the 20,000 H-1Bs exempt from the cap for Masters and higher graduates of U.S. institutions, we should note that as of this date, USCIS has not announced that enough petitions have been received. Therefore, there is still hope for these filings but remember that sometimes USCIS does not realize that enough petitions have been filed until after the fact. Therefore, although there is a possibility of filing Masters exempt filings, one should not automatically assume that there enough visa numbers available because USCIS there is always the possibility that they may have reached the limit without realizing it.