Nearly 800,000 H-1B Lottery Registrations Submitted in March 2023

USCIS has released the number of registrations it received in this year’s H-1B visa lottery:  780,884. This is nearly 300,000 more than last year’s numbers: 483,927, resulting in a 15% chance of selection. 

USCIS also shared that more than half the registrations (408,891) were for beneficiaries who had multiple employers submitting registrations on their behalf.  While it is lawful for a foreign national to have more than one employer register them in the annual H-1B lottery, USCIS is looking into this pattern more closely to make sure the registrations correspond to a real job offer instead of simply improving the chances of selection.  That said, certain sectors of the economy have a very tight labor market with employers fighting for talent and multiple employers wanting to hire the same foreign national (we see this in our practice).  

Here’s a chart to show how the number of registrations has grown since the online registration process for the annual H-1B lottery started in March 2020 for fiscal year 2021. 

The agency’s announcement is available here. 

We continue to work with employers and foreign nationals to identify alternative visa options if their registration was not selected.

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