United States: USCIS Releases Final Rule For Fee Increases (Effective: April 1, 2024) And Announces Updates To The H-1B Registration Process And The Registration Window For This Year's H-1B Cap!

On January 30, 2024, USCIS confirmed the H-1B lottery registration period for this year's H-1B cap season. As reported by USCIS: "The initial registration period for the FY 2025 H-1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 6, 2024, and run through noon Eastern on March 22, 2024. During this period, prospective petitioners, and their representatives, if applicable, must use a USCIS online account to register each beneficiary electronically for the selection process and pay the associated registration fee for each beneficiary."

Within the same update, USCIS announced the publication of the H-1B registration  final rule. We previously reported on the Notice of Proposed Rule Making in October 2023, and this final rule implements several of the proposed changes, but not all. Most importantly, it fundamentally alters the registration process to permit the beneficiary participating in the lottery only one registration regardless of the number of employers that choose to enter that beneficiary in the Cap selection. As an example, if a beneficiary previously secured 10 registrations from different employers and was selected 3 times in the prior lottery, that same beneficiary would only be entered once for selection on behalf of all 10 employers. This important change removes the incentive of securing multiple employers for the cap selection process.

We invite you to review our  H-1B Lottery 2024 (FY25) Memo on our website for updates about the beneficiary-centric selection process and USCIS's efforts to increase the integrity of the H-1B registration program. Please note: We will continually update our website memo throughout the cap selection period with any other regulatory updates, so please bookmark it to remain up to date. Given this final rule we anticipate a more orderly and fairer Cap selection process.

USCIS Fee Increase

Since 2016, USCIS has not issued a comprehensive increase in its fee schedule, but today, the Service published a final rule increasing fee across the board for many case types. According to the update, the fees will go into effect for cases filed on or after April 1, 2024. In addition to new fees, USCIS will also have several new form editions required on the same date.

We detail a sampling of these fee updates below. The Director of USCIS had this to say: "For the first time in over seven years, USCIS is updating our fees to better meet the needs of our agency, enabling us to provide more timely decisions to those we serve. Despite years of inadequate funding, the USCIS workforce has made great strides in customer service, backlog reduction, implementing new processes and programs, and upholding fairness, integrity, and respect for all we serve." In its closing remarks, USCIS noted that these fees will generate revenues to make a more efficient USCIS in terms of an improved customer experience and work to combat the historic backlog.

In the below chart, we have extracted some of the final fee increases that our clients most commonly file. Please note, the fees below are for paper filings:

Importantly, among other updates, USCIS recognized that not all employers are created equally and offered reduced fee rates in certain categories for employers with less than 25 employees. Those exceptions are noted here:

As noted, the above lists are not an exhaustive list of the upcoming changes to the fee schedule. For a full list of fee increases, please visit this website.

In addition, we previously reported on a fee increase for the premium processing service, which is effective February 26, 2024. Please see the below chart highlighting the fee increases for the premium processing service.

At BIL, we are dedicated to filing as many cases impacted by the change as possible before the upcoming increases in April. We additionally encourage our clients to initiate case work that can be completed as soon as possible to increase the likelihood that the case can be filed with the lower fees. With the earliest filing date for H-1B cap selections being April 1^st, all cap selections will automatically be subject to the higher fees.

This is a significant increase and cost to many companies and foreign nationals seeking immigration benefits with USCIS; we hope that the Service makes good on its promise to combat its historic backlogs and lackluster customer service offerings with these new revenues.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.