On March 27, 2020, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) provided the following updates on the H-1B cap registration process:

• USCIS has received more electronic registrations than available H-1B numbers under the quota for 85,000 new H-1B filings, necessitating a lottery;
• USCIS has completed a random selection process from the properly filed registration submissions; and
• USCIS will notify petitioners and attorneys of the selection results “no later than March 31, 2020.”

Employers and attorneys will need to log into the USCIS Registration portal in order to learn the status of each registration.  Registrations will have one of three statuses:

• Selected: “Selected means that the registration was selected in the lottery.  For selected petitions, employers will have 90 days to submit a complete H-1B petition to USCIS for adjudication.
• Submitted: Properly submitted registrations which are have not been selected in the lottery will be held “in reserve” in the event that USCIS does not receive an H-1B petition for each selected registration.  There is a possibility that USCIS will hold subsequent lotteries and select some of those registrations that are held in reserve.  These registrations will still show a status of “submitted,” likely until the end of the petition filing window when USCIS will determine if a petition was filed for each of the selected registrations.
• Denied: A registration will be denied if an employer submitted duplicate registrations for the beneficiary; or if payment was declined and not reconciled.

Mintz will be notifying clients individually soon after the results are posted by USCIS.