USCIS posted updates on the H-1B registration process to its registration portal on March 26 and 27, 2022. As expected, USCIS has received more electronic H-1B cap registrations than available H-1B numbers under the quota of 85,000 new H-1B filings, necessitating a lottery. It appears that USCIS has completed notification for all selected registrations.
Employers and attorneys will need to log in to the USCIS registration portal in order to learn the status of each registration. Registrations will have one of the below statuses:
- Selected: "Selected" means that the registration was selected in the lottery. For selected registrations, employers will have 90 days to submit a complete H-1B petition to USCIS for adjudication. The H-1B petition filing window begins on April 1, 2022 and ends on June 30, 2022.
- Submitted: Properly submitted registrations, which 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 a subsequent lottery later in the year and select some of those registrations that are being held in reserve. These registrations will continue to show a status of "submitted," likely until after the end of the petition filing window when USCIS will determine if a petition was filed for each of the selected registrations. In the past two years, USCIS has conducted a second H-1B lottery in late July.
- Denied / Invalidated-Failed Payment: A registration will be denied if an employer submitted duplicate registrations for the beneficiary, or if payment was declined and not reconciled.
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.