USCIS has confirmed to the American Immigration Lawyers Association that if, during the week of April 3-7, 2017, it receives enough petitions to exhaust the statutory annual H-1B visa limits, the petitions will be selected for processing by lottery.
As in recent years, petitions for the 20,000 Master’s degree cap exempt visas will be randomly selected by lottery first. Any Master’s degree petitions not selected then will be combined with the other H-1B petitions subject to the 65,000 annual cap, for selection to be processed by lottery.