Get your ten bucks out H-1B petitioners, because USCIS opens its online cap-subject H-1B registration portal on March 9th at noon Eastern Time. Petitioners will be able to file electronically to be eligible for the H-1B lottery until March 25th at noon Eastern Time.
Petitioners selected will be notified beginning March 31st and the following day USCIS will begin accepting full H-1B petitions. Those selected will have three months to file the completed petition.
When you register online, the account will show the following status: SUBMITTED. This means that your registration is eligible for selection. Following the lottery, if the status is still SUBMITTED, it means your registration has not been selected, but is still eligible for selection.
Following the lottery, the status could change to SELECTED, which means you have 30 days from notification to file the completed petition. NOT SELECTED means the petition is ineligible to file. DENIED means that duplicate registrations were filed on behalf of one beneficiary. Since this is in violation of registration rules, all registrations filed for said beneficiary are invalid for that fiscal year. INVALIDATED-FAILED PAYMENT means the ten dollar fee did not go through.
The H-1B lottery will NOT be derandomized based on wage level as the Biden Administration has officially delayed implementation of the Trump Administration’s wage-based H-1B selection regulation for review. If any changes happen, it will not impact this year’s H-1B lottery.
The regular cap of 65,000 petitions will be selected first, and then all beneficiaries with advanced degrees will get a second shot in the selection of 20,000 additional visas. The order of these two lotteries has recently been reversed and is expected to remain in this order, as is the electronic application process.
We anticipate high levels of RFEs to continue this H-1B cap-subject filing season. Answering RFEs can delay employee start dates, hinder company workflow, and, of course, drain resources of time and money for everyone involved. Make sure your case is bullet-proof before you file.
For a free review of your case visit www.ccifree.com. We will respond in 4 hours or less.
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the director of CCI TheDegreePeople.com. Sheila specializes in overturning RFEs and Denials for work visas.