Preparing For This Year’s H-1B Visa Lottery
U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that registrations for the online H-1B visa registration system will open on March 1, 2023 for the annual H-1B visa lottery selection process. Accordingly, employers must submit an electronic registration containing information about the company and each H-1B beneficiary between March 1, 2023 and March 17, 2023. USCIS will then conduct a lottery from the pool of registrations and select registrations to meet the H-1B visa cap no later than March 31st. Employers will then have 90 days to submit a full H-1B visa petition on behalf of the foreign worker named in the registration.
While the H-1B cap will remain at 85,000, USCIS again intends to reverse the lottery order in which it selects H-1B petitions for adjudication, to increase the amount of H-1B visas awarded to foreign nationals with U.S. master’s degrees and higher. This means USCIS will first conduct a lottery for 65,000 H-1B visas for individuals who only have a bachelor’s degree plus those individuals with U.S. master’s degrees and higher. Those individuals with advanced degrees not selected in that lottery would be placed in a second lottery pool to play for the remaining 20,000 H-1B visas.
Last year, USCIS received nearly 484,000 H-1B petitions (an all-time high). Whether we will see a repeat of last year’s H-1B demand is yet to be determined, however, with the H-1B registration period quickly approaching employers and foreign nationals seeking to work in the U.S. should start preparing their H-1B visa filings NOW.
Employers should assess their upcoming workforce needs and identify whether any foreign national employees will require H-1B visa sponsorship. These individuals may include:
New graduating foreign students in the U.S.
Overseas individuals seeking to start work in the U.S.
Foreign individuals in the U.S. already working under a different nonimmigrant status for a different employer and are seeking to change jobs
Failure to file your H-1B registrations by March 17, 2023 will prevent you from securing an H-1B visa for your employee. After the 2023 H-1B visas are gone, employers will have to wait until March 1, 2024 to file H-1B registrations again, and foreign employees may lose their lawful status and authorization to work.
If you have any questions about the H-1B visa process, contact me.