On March 27, 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began to release the fiscal year (FY) 2025 H-1B cap lottery results following an announcement that it had received enough registrations during the initial registration period.
The release of selections occurred less than a week after the conclusion of the H-1B cap registration period. This year’s H-1B lottery selections were conducted over a span of five days and concluded on April 1, 2024, when USCIS announced that it had received enough electronic registrations for unique beneficiaries during the initial registration period.
Quick Hits
- USCIS has yet to disclose the total number of H-1B registrations received for the FY 2025.The final rule, announced on January 30, 2024, has been incorporated into the H-1B FY 2025 lottery process, affecting how selections are made.
- Individuals not selected in this year’s H-1B lottery may be able to explore alternative options for continued employment authorization in the United States.
This year’s cap was highly anticipated, marking the first H-1B lottery conducted after USCIS’s announcement of its implementation of new safeguards and restrictions. These were detailed in a final rule published on January 30, 2024, aimed at “strengthen[ing] the integrity of and reduc[ing] the potential for fraud in the H-1B registration process.” A key objective was to ensure equal selection chances for each beneficiary, irrespective of multiple registrations submitted for them. Under this rule, the selection process was refined to focus on “unique beneficiaries” instead of registrations. This new selection methodology intends to reduce the number of fraudulent registrations by ensuring that each registrant beneficiary has the same chance of selection regardless of the number of registrations submitted on their behalf. In order to implement this process, USCIS required all registrants to provide passport information or a travel document.
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