DHS Defers Ranking of H-1B Registrations by Salary

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) has just announced that it will not rank H-1B registrations by salary for selection in this year’s H-1B visa lottery.  Instead, it will continue with the previous method of randomly selecting the H-1B registrations in the annual lottery.  We are still waiting to hear from USCIS when in March the registration period will open for the annual lottery. 

By way of background, USCIS had published a final rule, requiring H-1B registrations to be ranked and selected based on salary level, on January 7, 2021, which was scheduled to take effect on March 9, 2021.  There are four salary levels with Level 1 as the lowest level and Level 4 as the highest level for any given occupation. The levels and wages are established by the Department of Labor’s online wage library. Registrations with the highest salary levels would be selected first. USCIS has tabled this rule to December 31, 2021 in order to give USCIS more time to develop, test, and implement the modifications to the H-1B registration and selection process, train staff, perform public outreach, and give stakeholders time to adjust to the new system (please see a copy of the rule here). 

We will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as we have more information.

This alert is for informational purposes only. Please contact us if you would like to discuss this development further.