USCIS announced on April 11, 2018 that it had completed the random selection process for the available cap-subject H-1B visas for FY 2019.
In just five days, USCIS received petitions for over 190,000 H-1B petitions, far exceeding the 85,000 combined caps for master’s degree and bachelors degree or specialized knowledge employees. It then conducted a lottery to select the petitions that it would actually consider.
USCIS will return unselected petitions and filing fees to their petitioning employers, unless the petition violated the multiple filing prohibition announced only days before the filing period began (when many employers would have already prepared their petitions and had them ready to submit to USCIS, as discussed in this MeBIC post).
The USCIS announcement confirmed that petitions not subject to the caps will still be accepted and processed.
With over 100,000 petitions unable to be processed due to the insufficient number of cap-subject visas, once again it is clear that the H-1B system is in need of an overhaul if it is to meet the needs of U.S. employers and the economy.