H-1B lottery completed

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced today that it has conducted the H-1B lottery after having received enough registrations to meet or exceed the allotted H-1B quotas during the electronic pre-registration period.

Key points:                

• USCIS intends to notify petitioners whose registrations have been selected no later than March 31.
• MyUSCIS H-1B registrant accounts will show the status of each registration as either “submitted,” “selected,” or “denied.” Selected indicates that the registration for the candidate has been selected in the lottery and a full H-1B petition may be filed on his or her behalf. Submitted status may continue to display until the end of the fiscal year for registrations that were not selected in the lottery. “Denied” indicates that either duplicate registrations were submitted or payment was declined. If duplicates are detected, all registrations submitted for that individual are invalid for the fiscal year.
• Petitioners may begin to file H-1B cap-subject petitions for selected candidates April 1, and the filing period is expected to run for 90 days.

BAL Analysis: Companies should anticipate status updates to each of their H-1B candidates in their myUSCIS accounts and begin preparing to file full petitions for selected candidates. Companies are reminded that while the filing period will remain open for 90 days, they should prioritize time-sensitive candidates such as F-1 students on cap-gap and others whose status may expire soon. BAL clients may access all the latest updates and analysis on the H-1B Electronic Registration Resource Center.

This alert has been provided by the BAL U.S. Practice group. For additional information, please contact berryapplemanleiden@bal.com.

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