Registration Period for H-1B Visa Lottery to Open March 1st

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced that the registration period for this year’s H-1B visa lottery will open on March 1 and run through March 18. Like the last two years, employers must create a myUSCIS online account to electronically register and pay the $10 registration fee for each beneficiary. Registration for multiple beneficiaries will be available. Employers who need to create a new account can do so beginning on February 21. Once the registration period closes, USCIS will conduct a random lottery. The agency expects to notify selected registrants by March 31. Those applicants will then be able to file their complete H-1B petitions.

As a reminder, there are approximately 65,000 H-1B visas available for all applicants, with an additional 20,000 reserved for individuals who have earned a master’s degree or higher from a US school. Last year, USCIS received 308,613 H-1B registrations and initially selected 87,500 registrations in the lottery. Since not all registrants were approved for H-1B’s, or did not apply once selected, USCIS conducted two additional rounds of selections, resulting in a total of 131,970 selections for 85,000 visas.

H-1B workers who have already been selected in the lottery who need to extend their stay or change employers, as well as individuals who will work for a “cap-exempt employer” (which include institutions of higher education and certain related nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations and government research organizations) are not subject to the H-1B quota and therefore do not have to enter the lottery.

If you would like us to prepare your H-1B lottery registrations this year, please contact us as soon as possible.