US reaches fiscal year 2024 H-1B visa cap. Here's how to check status of your petition

The United States has received enough petitions to meet the annual H-1B visa cap. The H-1B program is widely used by US businesses to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations.

In a recent update, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) confirmed that the immigration agency had recieved a sufficient number of petitions, meeting the congressionally mandated caps for H-1B visas for fiscal year (FY) 2024. The regular cap of 65,000 and the US advanced degree exemption, also known as the master’s cap, of 20,000 have been reached.

How to check status of your petition

Registrants who were not selected will receive non-selection notices through their online accounts in the coming days. The status for these registrations will indicate 'Not Selected,' meaning they are not eligible to file an H-1B cap petition based on this registration.


For those exempt from the cap, the USCIS will continue to accept and process petitions. This includes petitions filed for current H-1B workers who have been previously counted against the cap and still retain their cap number.

The USCIS will also accept and process petitions for various purposes, such as extending the time a current H-1B worker may stay in the US, changing the terms of employment, allowing changes in employers, and permitting concurrent work in additional H-1B positions.

We will send non-selection notices to registrants through their online accounts over the next few days. When we finish sending these non-selection notifications, the status for properly submitted registrations that we did not select for the FY 2024 H-1B numerical allocations will show: 'Not Selected: Not selected – not eligible to file an H-1B cap petition based on this registration,'" USCIS said in a statement.

How USCIS determines if an H-1B petition is subject to the cap

The USCIS uses the information gathered during the electronic registration process to assess whether an H-1B petition falls under the congressionally mandated cap. This cap includes the standard 65,000 H-1B visas, often referred to as the "regular cap," and an exemption for advanced degree holders. The advanced degree exemption applies to beneficiaries with a US master's degree or higher and is available until the exempted beneficiaries exceed 20,000.

As per congressional directives, the annual regular cap for the H-1B category is set at 65,000. Not all H-1B nonimmigrant visas or status grants are subject to this cap. Also, 6,800 visas are reserved annually from the 65,000 for the H-1B1 program, established under the US-Chile and US-Singapore free trade agreements. Any unused visas in this category become available for the subsequent fiscal year's regular H-1B cap.

H-1B workers engaged in labor or services in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and Guam may be exempt from the H-1B cap, following the guidelines of the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 (CNRA), Public Law 110-229. Specifically, H-1B workers in Guam and the CNMI enjoy this exemption if their employers file the petition before December 31, 2029.