It appears that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will not hold a second H-1B cap lottery. While no formal announcement has been made, USCIS has begun updating unselected H-1B cap registrations as "Not Selected." This means that USCIS has received a sufficient number of H-1B cap petitions to fill the H-1B quota for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 through the initial lottery selection held by the agency in March 2022. It also means that any H-1B registration that USCIS did not select in the March 2022 lottery will not be eligible to file an H-1B petition this year. The next opportunity to sponsor an individual in a USCIS H-1B cap lottery will be in March 2023 for the FY2024 H-1B cap.
As previously reported, USCIS received more electronic H-1B cap registrations for FY2023 than available H-1B numbers under the annual quota of 85,000 new H-1B filings, necessitating a lottery. USCIS completed its initial lottery selection process in March 2022 and afforded employers with selected H-1B registrations 90 days to submit complete H-1B petitions to USCIS for adjudication.
As has been the case since the onset of the H-1B lottery registration program, USCIS held open the possibility of subsequent H-1B selection periods for registrations submitted in March in the event employers did not submit sufficient H-1B petitions to fill the annual quota following the agency's initial lottery selection.
Because USCIS received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to fill the FY2023 quota following its March 2022 lottery selection, there will be no second lottery this year. This is in contrast to the past two H-1B cap registration seasons when USCIS did not receive a sufficient number of filed petitions and selected additional H-1B registrations in subsequent lotteries.
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