On March 27, 2023, USCIS announced that they met their annual limit of 85,000 H-1B cap registrants, marking an end to the H-1B cap lottery selection process for FY 2024. In order to check the status of a submission, sponsoring employers and their attorneys can access their my.USCIS.gov account for each beneficiary. When checking the status of a registration, one of the following statuses will be listed: Selected, Submitted, Denied, or Invalidated- Failed Payment.
If selected, an employer will have the ability to file an H-1B cap petition for a beneficiary beginning April 1, 2023. If the status reflects as “submitted”, the beneficiary was not among those selected in the lottery but will remain in consideration until the end of the fiscal year if USCIS does not receive enough petitions during their filing period. If USCIS does not receive enough petitions, they may run another lottery. If another lottery is run and the petition is selected in the subsequent lottery, USCIS will notify the employer and attorney through their my.USCIS.gov accounts. If the registration was denied, registration for that beneficiary is invalid. Finally, if there was a failed payment, the submission is considered invalid.
Those who were selected in the lottery will have the opportunity to file their H-1B cap petitions during the filing period of April 1, 2023 to June 30, 2023. Most petitions can be filed at any time during that period, however, there are some applicants that have specific timing considerations. For example, if F-1 students want to take advantage of cap-gap and keep working, they should be mindful to file before their OPT employment authorization document expires. Another example is an applicant who has not received their degree yet and must wait for the degree to be issued before filing the petition.
You can read more about the next steps if your H-1B registration was selected here.
You can read about your options if you were not selected in the H-1B lottery here.
