The USCIS released an announcement on the afternoon of April 3, 2007 confirming that it has received enough H1B cases to meet the FY2008 cap. The regular cap was reached on the first day that the USCIS could accept H1B petitions under the FY2008 cap: Monday, April 2, 2007. Under the regulations, when the cap limit is reached on the first day of filing, a random selection process applies, including cases filed on the first two working days. In this case, H1B petitions received on both April 2 and April 3, 2007 will undergo data entry for the random selection process to determine which cases will receive the limited cap numbers.

The USCIS has to enter all H1B filings received on April 2nd and 3rd into its system before conducting the lottery selection process. They estimate that it may take several weeks to complete the data entry and random selection, due to case volume. Any H1B cap-subject case that is not selected will be rejected, and returned along with all filing fees

The status of the advanced-degree cap is still unknown at the time of this writing. The USCIS must sort these cases from the regular cap-subject filings.