USCIS Announces FY2021 Electronic Registration Selection is Complete

Today the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) announced that it has received a sufficient number of FY 2021 H-1B Cap registrations to meet the annual H-1B quota. As such, they have run the random selection process and will notify petitioners with selected registrations by March 31, 2020. By this date, petitioners and representatives will be able to log into their myUSCIS.gov accounts to see the status of the registrations they submitted. Cases that have been selected will have their status updated to “Selected” and cases that have not been selected will continue to show as “Submitted” as USCIS has indicated that it will keep all registrations available and open until the end of the fiscal year and, in the event that additional visa numbers become available (due to denials, withdrawals, failure to file after selection), USCIS may go back in and randomly select additional cases for processing, though they have not provided additional details about that process at this time.

Note that USCIS will only indicate that a registration has been “denied” in the event that it has discovered a duplicate registration was submitted by the same registrant for the same beneficiary, or a payment method was declined and not reconciled.

USCIS Announces Temporary Suspension of Premium Processing for FY2021 H-1B Cap Petitions

Today the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) announced that premium processing service for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 H-1B cap petitions would be temporarily suspended. As with past years, USCIS will resume premium processing in two phases. USCIS will initially resume premium processing for FY2021 cap-subject H-1B petitions requesting a change of status from F-1 nonimmigrant status no later than May 27, 2020, and will notify the public before premium processing resumes for these petitions. The earliest date that USCIS will resume premium processing for all other FY2021 cap-subject H-1B petitions is June 29, 2020. At this time, USCIS has confirmed that premium processing remains available for all other cap-exempt H-1B petitions, such as extension of stay requests.

D&S will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as they become available.

FY2021 Diversity Visa Lottery Opens at 12 noon (ET) On Wednesday, October 2, 2019

WHAT'S HAPPENING

The Fiscal Year 2021 Diversity Visa lottery (DV-2021), which makes 55,000 green card numbers available each year to nationals of countries among six different geographic regions with low rates of immigration to the U.S., will be open for entries beginning noon Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on Wednesday, October 2, 2019, and will close for entries at noon Eastern Standard Time (EST) on Tuesday, November 5, 2019. Eligible individuals who wish to participate in the program must apply in advance of the November 5th deadline and are encouraged to do as close to October 2nd as possible as heavy demand may result in website delays. No late entries or paper entries will be accepted.

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