On April 1, 2024, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it had reached the annual quota of 85,000 cap beneficiaries in the initial registration period for employment in FY 2025. USCIS has not yet disclosed the exact number of H cap pre-registrations it received. During this initial registration period, USCIS said it had received in excess of 65,000 standard H-1B cap numbers and the cap exemption of 20,000 for holders of U.S. advanced degrees.

For each registered beneficiary, the USCIS online system will disclose the following:

• Selected– The employer may file an H-1B cap petition for a unique beneficiary beginning April 1 and concluding on June 30.
• Submitted– The beneficiary was not chosen in the initial lottery selection. However, the beneficiary will remain in consideration for selection until the end of the fiscal year in the event that USCIS does not receive enough complete H-1B cap submissions during the filing period to meet the annual quota. In 2020, for instance, with the onset of COVID, there were not sufficient H-1B petition submissions, and USCIS reopened the lottery twice, once in August and again in November 2020. It is unknown at this time whether USCIS will determine that it has not received sufficient submissions and when it might reopen the lottery cap filing period.
• Denied– A duplicate registration was filed by the same employer for the same foreign national beneficiary. If a registration is considered a duplicate submission, all of the employer’s registrations for the specific beneficiary will be considered invalid.
• Deleted– The registration is no longer eligible for selection in the lottery.
• Processing submission – USCIS is processing the submission and will take up to72 hours for information to appear on the USCIS registration website.

For those cases selected in the H-1B lottery, employers must adhere to the filing period which will run from April 1-June 30. While in most cases, a cap petition may be filed at any time during that time frame, some cases must be filed at specific times and are time sensitive. Special consideration would need to be afforded to F-1 students holding optional practical training status who will need ‘H-1B cap -gap’ protection to continue employment during the summer months. Additionally, consideration would be given to those graduating in the spring of 2024 who, meeting all requirements of the degree, file H-1B petitions after conferral of the formal degree.

For those foreign nationals not selected in the H-1B cap lottery, consideration to other visa category eligibility should be carefully reviewed and considered.

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