Federal immigration officials recently announced completion of the fiscal year 2023 H-1B CAP selection process, handing out the much-prized limited availability visas to those workers who qualify due to their specialized nature of their position and hold a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent of work experience. The March 29 announcement from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was greeted with caution from employers who have come to rely on these crucial H-1B visas for their workforce. What do you need to know about this development?

How Do We Check if a Registrant Has Been Selected?

Registrants were individually registered through the registrant employer’s USCIS account. USCIS does not assign registrants case numbers or a receipt notice. Instead, USCIS provides status updates next to each registrant’s name in the registrant employer’s portal. Selected registrants will show “selected” next to their name. Registrants showing “submitted” status means they were not selected during this initial selection.

A Registrant Was Selected! Now What?

Selected registrants will have between April 1, 2022 through June 30, 2022 to file their petitions. Additionally, USCIS has allowed for premium processing of H-1B CAP petitions this year. If the H-1B CAP petition is approved prior to October 1, 2022, H-1B status will take effect on or after October 1, 2022, depending on the method of applying.

A Registrant Was Not Selected – Do They Still Have a Chance?

Last year, USCIS completed three rounds of selections, and confirmed that the H-1B selections were completed on February 28, 2022. A second round of selections may happen again, but likely will not be conducted until July 2022. 

USCIS will announce when all H-1B CAP fiscal year 2023 numerical allocations have been made and formally close the selection process. USCIS will update the registrant statuses to “selected” or “not selected” at that time.