USCIS Completes H-1B Lottery for FY 2025

USCIS announced today that it completed selection of the registrations submitted in this year’s H-1B visa lottery.  The agency did not release the number of registrations it received, but based on our firm’s experience, chances of selection seemed higher with the new beneficiary-centric selection process.  USCIS normally releases this data later in the year, and we will update you with these numbers once they are available.

If your registration was selected, you should have received an email notification from USCIS to the email address associated with your myUSCIS account.  If we helped you with the registration, we will be in touch with you this week regarding next steps. 

For the current status of your registration(s), please log into the sponsoring employer’s myUSCIS account. It now will show one of the following statuses for each beneficiary registered: Submitted, Selected, or Denied - duplicate registration.  “Submitted” registrations will remain in consideration for selection until the end of the fiscal year on September 30, 2025, at which point they will become either Selected or Not Selected.  If your registration shows Denied, please contact us to discuss.   This could mean the beneficiary used different passports to have more registrations filed on their behalf. 

If we submitted a registration on your behalf, and it continues to show Submitted, unfortunately, your registration was not selected.  USCIS may select additional registrations later this year if it does not receive enough petitions based on the registrations selected. USCIS has made additional selections in prior years, so the same may happen this year. We definitely will keep you updated about further selections by USCIS.  If you would like, we also would be happy to set up a call to discuss alternative visa options. 

For those with selected registrations, we have 90 days from April 1, 2024, to file the complete H-1B petition with USCIS. While USCIS has rolled out online filing of the H-1B petition(s), their system is not compatible with case management software most immigration attorneys use, so the petitions will need to be filed by paper with a print out of the lottery selection notice.  USCIS anticipates delays in sending out receipt notices, so use of a delivery service, like UPS or Fedex, is highly recommended to document receipt of the petition by USCIS.  The agency will not accept prepaid mailers with which to mail approval notices because its process for mailing out approval notices through first-class mail is fully automated. 

The new government filing fees for H-1B petitions take effect today, April 1, 2024. Here’s a breakdown of the government filing fees.  
A lawsuit has been filed to prevent these fees from taking effect.  The request to put a hold on these fees while the lawsuit is in process is still pending.  We will keep you updated.  

The agency’s full announcement about the H-1B lottery is available here.  

We look forward to working with you over the next few months either with the preparation and filing of your H-1B petition or discussion of alternative visa options.  

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