H-1B Cap Reached for FY 2023

USCIS announced today that they have received enough petitions to meet the 85,000 H-1B cap quota for FY 2023. The H-1B visa is a nonimmigrant visa suitable for individuals who have a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent and a job offer from a sponsoring employer in a specialty occupation that is related to their field of study. Currently, the H-1B visa cap stands at 85,000 visas for college graduates, 20,000 of which are allocated solely to applicants with U.S. master’s degrees. The number of applications each year significantly exceeds the number of available visas.  As a result, USCIS runs a lottery every year to select 85,000 total applications to adjudicate. To learn more about the H-1B visa and your eligibility, please click here.

This announcement means that USCIS will not run a second lottery for H-1B cap petitions for this year. This year, a total of 483,927 registrations were submitted, an increase of approximately 57% over the prior year. USCIS selected 127,600 of these registrations to meet the quota, or approximately 26% of the total. USCIS typically selects more petitions than are needed to meet the annual H-1B quota, to account for selected registrations for which no petition is ultimately filed, as well as cases that are denied, rejected, withdrawn, or revoked.