The New Year will bring significant changes to the H-1B lottery selection process and  employers can look forward to a more efficient H-1B cap selection process. USCIS has announced the “Registration Requirement for Petitioners Seeking to File H-1B Petitions on Behalf of Cap-Subject Aliens” will be fully implemented for the Fiscal Year 2021 H-1B cap filing season. The initial registration period will open from March 1, 2020 to March 20, 2020.  During this period of time, employers or their authorized representatives will submit an individual registration for each foreign national it wishes to sponsor for an H-1B for a fee of $10 per registration. 

Once the registration period closes, USCIS will randomly select the number of registrations necessary to fulfill the H-1B visa quota allotment.  Consistent with last year’s changes, USCIS will select 65,000 H-1B petitions from all cases received, inclusive of regular cap cases and advanced degree exception cases. USCIS will then select from the remaining advanced degree exception cases to fill the remaining 20,000 available H-1B slots.

USCIS has indicated they will be posting step-by-step instructions informing registrants how to complete the registration and announcing key timelines on the USCIS website, and we will continue to provide updates as these become available.

Given the anticipated changes, we encourage employers to start now in identifying employees or anticipated employees who wish to be sponsored for the H-1B. Potential applicants and positions should be vetted for H-1B eligibility prior to the pre-registration deadline.