The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has officially announced that it has reached the congressionally mandated limit for H-1B visas for the fiscal year 2025. On December 2, 2024, the agency confirmed that it has received sufficient petitions to exhaust both the standard cap of 65,000 visas and the advanced degree exemption, often referred to as the master’s cap, which allows for an additional 20,000 visas.In the days ahead, USCIS will inform registrants whose applications were not selected through updates in their online accounts. For those applications that were not chosen, the status will reflect: “Not Selected: Not eligible to file an H-1B cap petition based on this registration.” Furthermore, USCIS has indicated that it will continue to accept and process petitions that are exempt from the cap. This includes petitions for current H-1B workers who have already been counted against the cap and wish to retain their cap number, extensions of H-1B status for individuals already residing in the United States, changes in employment terms for existing H-1B workers, transfers of H-1B workers to new employers, and authorizations for H-1B workers to assume additional roles.
