United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 H-1B cap-subject petitions will begin being accepted on April 1, 2019. The agency has also announced several changes to the petition process:

Premium Processing

FY 2020 premium processing for cap-subject H-1B petitions will take place in two phases: (1) petitions requesting change of status and (2) all other petitions, such as those filed with consular processing. Petitioners will be able to concurrently file their request for premium processing with their H-1B petition. USCIS will begin processing these concurrent filings by May 20, 2019 at the latest. USCIS anticipates that it will begin processing all other cap-subject H-1B petitions in June 2019.

Employer Data Hub

USCIS will launch the H-1B Employer Data Hub on uscis.gov on April 1, 2019. In an effort to to provide additional transparency into the H-1B program, the public will be able to search for information including which companies sponsored H-1B employees and how many, as well as approval and denial rates.

Cap Selection

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced changes to the H-1B cap selection process with reference to petitions eligible for the advanced degree exemption. More information on these changes can be found here.

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