H-1B Lottery Registration Opens Today
The registration period for this year's H-1B visa lottery opens today, March 7, 2025 at 12pm (EST) and will close on March 24, 2025 at 12pm (EST). During this period, U.S. employers can register foreign nationals for the annual H-1B lottery online with information on their valid passport or travel document.
As a reminder, the government fee for each registration has increased this year from $10 to $215, which will likely decrease the number of registrations and increase the chances of selection.
Employers that are submitting a registration for the first time will need to create an organizational account here. Please be sure to record the email address and password used to set up the account. If you created an account for the H-1B lottery in a previous year, please log in and confirm your user credentials still work.
The agency will continue the beneficiary-centric selection process for H-1B registrations which relies on the beneficiary’s valid passport details to create the foreign national’s profile. Each beneficiary who has a registration submitted on their behalf will be entered into the lottery only once, regardless of how many employers submit registrations for them. If a beneficiary is selected in the lottery, each employer that submitted a registration on that unique beneficiary’s behalf will be notified of the selection and will be eligible to file a petition for that beneficiary.
Please note that the agency expressly prohibits a beneficiary from being registered under more than one passport or travel document. Doing so could result in the revocation of the selection or H-1B petition.
As a summary, here are the key dates for this year's lottery:
March 7: H-1B registration period opens at 12 PM EST.
March 24: H-1B registration period closes at 12 PM EST.
March 31: Date by which USCIS intends to notify employers of selected registrants.
April 1: The earliest date that H-1B petitions may be filed.
By way of background, there is an annual limit to the number of H-1B visas available each year. There are approximately 65,000 H-1B visas available and an additional 20,000 H-1B visas available for individuals with a U.S. Master’s degree or higher. Because the demand for H-1B visas typically surpasses the annual allocation, USCIS opens a registration period in March for nearly three weeks. At the end of the registration window, USCIS runs a random lottery to select the first 65,000 H-1B visas. It then pulls all the US Master’s degree holders from the pool of registrations that were not selected, and runs a second lottery for the remaining 20,000 visas. Employers whose registrations have been selected receive an email from USCIS by April 1.
If you would like our help with the H-1B lottery, please get in touch.
Wishing all registrants and their employers the best of luck!
This alert is for informational purposes. Please contact us if you would like to discuss this development further.