H-1B Lottery 2020: Looking Ahead

USCIS’s first ever electronic H-1B visa lottery process successfully took place this year despite significant concerns about the agency’s ability to implement and execute such an online tool.   USCIS received nearly 275,000 registrations between March 1 and March 20, 2020. The number of registrations increased by nearly 30% this year (USCIS received 199,000 H-1B petitions in last year’s lottery), which is not surprising given the relative ease of the online registration process compared to the practice in previous years of filing complete H-1B petitions the first week of April. 

For those of you who like statistics, 46% of the registrations were for individuals holding a U.S. master’s degree; 67.7% of the registrations were for Indian nationals, and 13.2% were for Chinese nationals.  

Filing Deadline for H-1B Lottery Petitions: Employers whose registrations were selected received notifications from USCIS between March 27 to March 31.  Employers have been given 90 days to file an H-1B petition on behalf of the person named in the selected registration.  USCIS must receive these H-1B petitions by June 30, 2020. 

In light of the pandemic, stakeholders asked USCIS to extend the 90-day period, but USCIS has declined to do so.  

Delay in Issuance of Receipt Notices and Case Processing: At the same time, USCIS announced yesterday (Monday, April 13) that employers should expect a delay in data entry and receipt notices until at least May 1, 2020, due to the pandemic.  Once data entry begins on May 1, USCIS will process petitions in the order they were received, which means USCIS is accepting petitions effective April 1, 2020, but it is not entering these petitions into their system until May 1, 2020. 

Premium Processing Unavailable Indefinitely:  Premium processing of all petitions, including H-1B petitions, is suspended indefinitely at this time.  When it resumes, it is unclear whether USCIS will phase in premium processing of H-1B lottery petitions per its previous announcement with priority given to those H-1B lottery petitions filed requesting a change of status from F-1 to H-1B effective October 1, 2020.    

Possibility of Registration Being Selected Later this Year:  According to USCIS, registrations that were not selected at the end of March could still be selected through the end of the fiscal year, which ends on September 30, 2021.  If not all selected registrations are acted upon by June 30, 2020, this may open up more H-1B visa numbers and registrations could become selected later in the year. USCIS has not detailed how they will be implementing these later selections, but employers and their attorneys should get a notification that there has been a change in their myUSCIS account, which would indicate that a registration has been selected.

We will continue to monitor the situation with the processing of H-1B lottery petitions and provide updates here.  

Please note that this alert is for informational purposes only.  If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us.