USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) has announced that the H-1B cap for fiscal year 2027 has been reached.
What exactly this means
USCIS says it has received enough petitions to reach both caps set by Congress:
- The regular cap of 65,000
- The US master's degree or higher exemption of 20,000 (commonly called the "master's cap")
Both are full, which means that for FY 2027, no more cap-subject H-1B petitions will be accepted.
Who isn't affected
The cap only applies to "cap-subject" petitions. The following never counted against the cap and can still be filed as usual:
- Extensions of existing H-1B status
- H-1B transfers when changing employers
- Part-time or second jobs for people already in H-1B status
- Employment at universities, nonprofits affiliated with universities, nonprofit research organizations and government research organizations (cap-exempt employers)
If you're already in H-1B status, this announcement has nothing to do with you.
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Does it affect green card wait times?
Not directly. H-1B is a nonimmigrant work visa. Green card wait times are calculated separately by the State Department under immigrant visa quotas, and the two sets of numbers are not connected.
Some people link the two and guess that "with so many H-1B petitions this year, the green card line will surely move slower." That reasoning doesn't hold up, at least on timing: someone selected for H-1B this year first has to work, go through PERM (labor certification, where the employer proves to the Department of Labor that it can't find a suitable local worker) and have an I-140 filed (the immigrant petition the employer files for you) before getting a priority date and joining the green card line. That usually takes several years. Today's visa bulletin depends on the backlog of people already ahead of you and that year's immigrant visa quota, not on how many H-1B petitions were filed this year.
As for how big the effect might be many years from now, we haven't done that calculation and won't draw a conclusion.