USCIS Selecting Additional H-1B Registrations from this Year's Lottery

On July 29th, we learned that USCIS selected additional H-1B lottery registrations from the registrations that were not selected in March 2021.  The newly selected registrations have notices that say “FY2022 Selection of Reserve Registration” and indicate a filing period of 8/2/2021 to 11/3/2021.  If we filed a registration on your behalf and it was selected in this second lottery, we have already reached out to your employer.   Your employer also should have received a notification from USCIS about the selection. 

The news of a second lottery is surprising because USCIS received 308,613 H-1B registrations in March, which is an increase of over 34,000 registrations from last year, and the economy is far stronger this year so the chances of an employer not acting on a registration are lower.   It also happened earlier in the summer compared to last year.  If a second lottery happens with such a high number of registrations and strong economy, I think it’s fair to assume that USCIS will generally be running a second lottery over the summer in the following years. 

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