USCIS Announces Changes in H-1B Lottery for FY2025

In a move intended to reduce fraud seen in previous years, the USCIS has announced new guidelines for its annual H-1B selection lottery. Employers interested in sponsoring foreign nationals for the 85,000 “slots” available every fiscal year must submit their registrations online from 12 p.m. March 6, 2024, through 12 p.m. March 22, 2024. The USCIS will then conduct a random selection for both the advanced degree (Masters) and regular (Bachelors) caps afterward and notify participants of the results.

In the past several years, the USCIS has received hundreds of thousands of these registrations, many from different employers for the same foreign nationals duplicating entries of people already entered in the lottery. To address this, entries this year are required to include information from the person’s passport or other travel document. The USCIS has stated it will then select registrations under a “beneficiary-centric process” intended to “reduce the potential for fraud and ensure each beneficiary would have the same chance of being selected, regardless of the number of registrations submitted on their behalf by an employer.”

In a move providing some flexibility when filing H-1B petitions (after being selected in the lottery), employers are no longer required to indicate a start date of October 1 on their applications if, for example, their selection notice indicates a filing window after that date.

Further, this new rule emphasized the USCIS’ ability to deny or revoke these applications if it determines the registration entry contained any false information and/or if the credit card payment for the registration fee is “declined, disputed, or otherwise invalid.”

These latest changes to the H-1B Registration process should provide a more even-handed opportunity for foreign nationals to be selected than in past years.

For more information about this and other immigration issues, please contact the author of this alert, James G. Aldrich, Jr., at jaldrich@dykema.com or 248-203-0583, or your Dykema relationship attorney.