U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services has confirmed that it has received enough H-1B petitions to satisfy
both the 65,000 slot regular cap and the 20,000 slot U.S. Master's advanced
degree exemption for Fiscal Year 2027, which begins October 1, 2026. USCIS
announced that it had received enough cap petitions to fill the 85,000 slots
available for H-1B employment for the coming fiscal year and the agency will
not run a second cap lottery selection for H-1B employment in FY 2027.
How We Got Here
This announcement is the final
step in a process that started months earlier. On March 31, 2026, USCIS
announced the completion of the selection process for the H-1B cap lottery for
FY 2027 and the FY 2027 lottery was the first to use the new weighted, wage level
based selection process established under a DHS rule that took effect on
February 27, 2026. Unlike the purely random lottery used in prior years, this
cycle's selection process favoured registrations offering higher wages, based
on the Department of Labor's four-level prevailing wage system.
Petitioners had ninety days from
April 1, 2026, to file complete H-1B petitions for their selected
beneficiaries, with the window closing on June 30, 2026. Now that USCIS has
processed the resulting filings, it has confirmed enough of them were properly submitted
to fill the entire annual allocation hence this announcement that the cap is
officially "reached" in the petition filing sense, not just the
registration selection sense.
The Numbers Tell an
Interesting Story
One of the more notable data
points from this cycle is the drop in registration volume. In May 2026, USCIS
reported that 211,600 registrations were properly submitted for FY 2027, down
sharply from 343,981 in FY 2026 a decline of roughly 38.5%. That's a
significant contraction and it's reasonable to connect it to the new weighted
selection system and the steep financial burden now attached to many H-1B
filings. Under the Presidential Proclamation restricting entry of certain
nonimmigrant workers, H-1B petitions filed on or after September 21, 2025,
generally must be accompanied by an additional $100,000 payment as a condition
of eligibility, unless the employer secures a national interest exception.
Faced with that cost and lower odds for lower wage roles, many employers likely
chose not to register marginal candidates this cycle.
Is a Second Lottery Really Off
the Table?
USCIS's official language is
carefully hedged it says enough petitions have been received to meet the cap,
not that every selected slot has been filled with an approved petition. There's
a real distinction between those two things. In past cap cycles, additional
"supplemental" selection rounds have sometimes been run later in the
year when initially selected employers didn't end up filing, withdrew petitions
or had cases denied. In some prior years, additional selection processes took
place in the summer and fall to make unused H-1B visas available and
immigration attorneys note the same theoretical possibility remains this year. One
immigration attorney has pointed out that a second lottery may still be
possible, since an employer may decide for any reason not to file Form I-129 on
behalf of a selected worker, leaving unused numbers on the table.
That said, the tone and timing of
this announcement arriving after the June 30 filing deadline has passed and
USCIS has had time to tally submissions suggests the agency is fairly confident
it has enough valid petitions in hand. A second lottery isn't impossible, but
it would depend on USCIS discovering a shortfall only after further processing
(denials, withdrawals, RFE non-responses), which historically hasn't been
common in high demand cycles.
