United States | USCIS to Hold Second H-1B Registration Lottery for Fiscal Year 2025

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced that it will conduct a second lottery for H-1B registration for fiscal year 2025.

Most important points:

• USCIS randomly selects additional H-1B registrations for unique beneficiaries from previously filed electronic registrations.
• Prospective applicants whose registrations are selected in this second round will be notified that they are eligible to file an H-1B application below the limit.
• Those with selected registrations will have their USCIS online accounts updated with a selection notice, detailing the time period for filing the petition. No further actions are required of registrants at this time.
• USCIS will not conduct a second selection for the advanced degree waiver (the master’s cap) since previously selected registrations have already met the FY 2025 master’s cap numerical allocation. Previously filed registrations that indicated they were eligible for the master’s cap will be included in the second round of selection for the regular cap.

Extra information: After USCIS conducted an initial random selection for the fiscal year 2025 H-1B limit in March, it determined that it would need to select additional unique beneficiary registrations to reach the numerical allocation of the fiscal year 2025 regular limit. The initial filing period for fiscal year 2025 ran from April 1 through June 30, 2024. The initial overall registration selection rate was 25.6%, with 120,603 registrations selected out of 470,342 eligible registrations.

BAL analysis: News of a second lottery is a welcome development, although it remains to be seen how many additional registrations will be selected. USCIS will announce when it has completed this second process of selections and notifications. BAL will provide updates as information becomes available.

This alert is provided by BAL US Practice Group. For more information, please contact [email protected].

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