Second H-1B Visa Lottery to Be Held for Fiscal Year 2024 Cap (1)

US Citizenship and Immigration Services will hold a second random lottery for H-1B specialty occupation visas to meet an annual cap for fiscal year 2024, the agency announced Thursday. An initial lottery was held in March for the visas, which are especially popular in fields like tech and engineering. USCIS subsequently announced that it had received more than 780,000 employer registrations—many of them indicating possible attempts to game the lottery system. In its announcement Thursday, USCIS said the agency determined that another lottery is needed to meet the fiscal year 2024 cap. Video: A Brief History of the H-1B Visa USCIS will select additional registrations from those previously submitted electronically. Only registrants selected in the lottery process are eligible to move forward with H-1B petitions. New H-1B visas are capped at 85,000 each year, a number that includes 20,000 reserved for workers with advanced degrees. They have a duration of three years with an option to extend for another three. Visa holders who make sufficient progress toward an application for permanent residency can remain on the visas indefinitely with employer sponsorship. The registrations for the upcoming fiscal year increased 61% from those for FY 2023, which had been the previous record high. But the large number of multiple registrations filed on behalf of individual workers raised red flags about companies seeking an unfair advantage, USCIS said in April. The agency has launched fraud investigations, which could lead to possible denial or revocation of visas as well as criminal prosecution. Ron Matten, managing partner at Matten Law, said that if a single beneficiary had multiple registrations submitted on their behalf, that would mean several others don’t move forward with H-1B petitions. Public statements from USCIS about potential fraud also may have led some registrants not to pursue a petition after winning the lottery, he said. “They may have decided not to submit H-1B petitions at all to avoid the possibility that they’re found to have committed some sort of fraud that would impact their ability to bring in anybody this year or in the future,” Matten said. In response to an inquiry about how fraud investigations factored into the second lottery, USCIS said in a statement that additional information will be provided once the process is completed and selected registrants are notified. (Updated with attorney and USCIS comments about the second lottery.) To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Kreighbaum in For more information, visit us at https://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/.