Nearly 500,000 H-1B Lottery Registrations Submitted in March 2024

USCIS has released the number of registrations it received for this year’s H-1B visa lottery: 479,953, resulting in 120,603 selected registrants.*  This is nearly 300,000 less than last year’s numbers: 780,884. In comparison to last year’s chance of selection of 15%, the chances of being selected in the H-1B lottery for this fiscal year 2025 increased to 25.13%. 

This significant decrease in the total number of registrations and the increased chance of selection in this year’s H-1B Lottery is due to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) new Beneficiary Centric Selection process, which linked registrations to an individual beneficiary based on their passport number instead of by employers.  

Over the past few years, the agency noticed an increase in the number of beneficiaries with multiple registrations by prospective employers submitted on their behalf.  The agency discovered that a lot of these “employers” were shell companies set up largely to file H-1B registrations that would increase the chances of selection of a foreign national. 

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

According to USCIS, in fiscal year 2025, there were approximately 442,000 unique beneficiaries and around 52,700 unique employers, which were similar to the figures from fiscal year 2024. However, in the fiscal year 2024, USCIS saw 408,891 registrations for beneficiaries with multiple registrations. In the fiscal year 2025, after the implementation of beneficiary centered selection, this number decreased dramatically.  The preliminary figures for the registration phase of the FY 2025 H-1B cap confirm a significant decrease in attempts to game the system compared to previous years. 

While the chances of being selected increased this year, it’s not clear how much better the chances of selection were for individuals with a US master’s degree because USCIS does not disclose how many individuals with US master’s degrees were registered. However, based on what we understand, the probability of being selected in the first round of the H1B lottery, which pulls from all the registrations, stands at 26.67%. If the US master’s degree holders are not chosen in the first round, their chances decrease slightly to 18.18% in the second round, which is specifically reserved for those not selected in the first round but holding advanced degrees. When these probabilities are combined, the total likelihood of an advanced degree holder being selected in the H1B lottery amounts to approximately 39.93%, which matches with what we see at our practice. 

*The agency selects more registrations than the annual allocation of ~80,000 H-1B visas because not all employers are able to act on their registrations and not all petitions are approved.

Congratulations again to all those who were selected in this year’s lottery.  For those who were not selected this year, please contact us so we can help identify alternative visa options. 

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