First Round of H-1B Lottery Complete

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On March 27, 2023, USCIS announced that they had finished conducting the first round of the registration selection process and had completed notifying all selected registrations of their status. While it is possible that USCIS might run an additional round of the lottery at a later date, it is not considered likely this year.

Employers and attorneys will need to log in to the USCIS registration portal in order to learn the status of each registration. To interpret the information in the USCIS H-1B lottery portal, registrations will have one of the below statuses:

  • Selected: “Selected” means that the registration was selected in the lottery. For selected registrations, employers will have 90 days to submit a complete H-1B petition to USCIS for adjudication. The H-1B petition filing window begins on April 1, 2023 and ends on June 30, 2023.

  • Submitted: Properly submitted registrations, which have not been selected in the lottery, will be held “in reserve” in the event that USCIS does not receive an H-1B petition for each selected registration. There is a possibility that USCIS will hold a subsequent lottery later in the year and select some of those registrations that are being held in reserve. These registrations will continue to show a status of “submitted,” likely until after the end of the petition filing window, when USCIS will determine if a petition was filed for each of the selected registrations. In two of the past three years, USCIS has conducted a second H-1B lottery in late July.

  • Denied / Invalidated-Failed Payment: A registration will be denied if an employer submitted duplicate registrations for the beneficiary or if payment was declined and not reconciled.

If you have been selected in the H-1B lottery, or have any questions regarding the H-1B lottery process or would like to discuss alternatives to an H-1B visa, please reach out to info@iandoli.com to schedule a consultation with one of our attorneys.

Link: https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/fy-2024-h-1b-cap-season-updates