United States: USCIS Will Run Second FY 2025 H-1B Cap Lottery
July 30, 2024
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At a glance
- Today USCIS announced that it plans to run a second lottery of properly submitted FY 2025 H-1B cap registrations to select additional unique beneficiaries.
- The additional lottery is taking place because USCIS did not receive enough H-1B cap petitions during the initial 90-day filing period to meet the 65,000 regular quota for FY 2025.
- Employers and their representatives should begin receiving USCIS notifications that additional H-1B cap registrations were selected in a second FY 2025 cap lottery draw.
- USCIS will announce when it has completed the second lottery selection process and has notified all employers of all new selections.
The issue
USCIS announced today that it will conduct a second lottery from properly submitted H-1B cap registrations to select more unique beneficiaries to reach the FY 2025 regular cap quota. The second lottery is being conducted because USCIS did not receive enough H-1B cap petitions to meet the 65,000 regular cap quota during the initial filing period, which ran from April 1 to June 30, 2024.
The agency has confirmed there will be no further selections for the advanced degree exemption as enough advanced degree cap petitions have already been received to satisfy the FY 2025 advanced degree numerical allocation of 20,000. USCIS confirmed that the second round of selection for the regular cap will include previously submitted registrations that indicated eligibility for the advanced degree exemption along with registrations that indicated eligibility for the regular cap.
USCIS has not indicated how many additional selections it will make in the second lottery. All employers who filed H-1B registrations for beneficiaries selected in the second drawing will be eligible to submit an H-1B petition on behalf of the named beneficiary during a 90-day period designated in the H-1B cap selection notice.
Background
In the initial FY 2025 lottery, USCIS received H-1B cap registrations for approximately 442,000 unique beneficiaries. The agency selected 114,017 of these beneficiaries – or approximately 25.8% of those registered - to meet the annual H-1B quota of 85,000. This was the first year USCIS conducted a new beneficiary-centric cap selection process instead of the registration-centric selection conducted in prior cap years. The overall number of registrations in FY 2025 decreased sharply from last year; 470,342 eligible registrations were filed this year, while a record 758,994 registrations were filed last year. According to USCIS, the data from the FY 2025 registration process indicates a reduction in misuse of the H-1B registration process to obtain an unfair advantage.
USCIS normally selects more registrations (this year, more unique beneficiaries) than needed to meet the annual quota, to account for cases for which no petition is ultimately filed, as well as cases that are denied, rejected, withdrawn, or revoked.
Employers are not required to take any action to be included in the second lottery. USCIS is selecting from among the H-1B registrations that were filed during the March 2024 registration period but not chosen in the initial lottery drawing.
How to determine whether a case has been selected in the second drawing
An employer whose beneficiary is newly selected will see the beneficiary’s registration status change from “Submitted” to “Selected” in their myUSCIS online account. The employer should also receive a USCIS email indicating that action has been taken. The employer or its immigration counsel must log into the H-1B cap registration system and print out a selection notice for the case. The notice will inform the employer of the filing deadline and the specific USCIS filing location. The notice must be included when the employer files a complete H-1B cap petition for the beneficiary.
In today’s announcement, USCIS says that the agency will announce when the second lottery is complete and all employers with newly selected registrations have been notified.
Fragomen is closely monitoring the second FY 2025 cap selection and will provide updates as more information becomes available.
This alert is for informational purposes only. If you have any questions, please contact the immigration professional with whom you work at Fragomen.
