As a follow-up to our recent H-1B visa update, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced recently that it has reopened the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 H-1B visa lottery that it conducted earlier this year in order to meet the annual statutory cap.
H-1B visas are issued to foreign workers in “specialty occupations” that require the theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge, most commonly in computing, science, math, and engineering fields. For several years, demand for H-1B visas has exceeded the quota set by statute, resulting in visas being granted each year through a competitive lottery.
Under the electronic pre-registration system implemented last year, employers who wanted to have an H-1B beneficiary considered for the FY 2022 H-1B lottery had to pre-register online between March 9 and March 25 of this year. On March 30, USCIS announced that it had received “enough” registrations to reach the FY 2022 H-1B cap and that it had completed the lottery. Employers whose registrations were selected were notified that their online USCIS accounts should have reflected a “Selected” status.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.