H-1B Registration Opens in 2 Weeks

Each year, the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) conducts an H-1B registration selection process for foreign nationals who have not previously held H-1B status. The H-1B cap registration period for fiscal year 2026 will open at noon eastern time on March 7, 2025, and will run through noon eastern time on March 24, 2025.

Typically, registrants include individuals currently in the United States in F-1, H-4, L-1, TN, E-1, E-2, or E-3 status, as well as foreign national employees working abroad and seeking to relocate to the United States.

Congress has established a statutory annual limit or “cap” of 65,000 H-1B visas for foreign nationals with a bachelor’s-level education or higher (referred to as the “Regular Cap”). An additional 20,000 H-1Bs are set aside for foreign nationals with a U.S. master’s level education or higher (referred to as the “Master’s Cap”).

Under the H-1B cap registration process, USCIS will conduct a lottery no later than April 1, 2025, to select candidates from the registration pool who will benefit from the limited number of annually available H-1B visas.

USCIS may conduct multiple lotteries in a given fiscal year if USCIS does not receive a sufficient number of petitions under the applicable caps.

Employers interested in registering a foreign national as part of the H-1B cap registration process should be aware of the following regulatory changes in effect for the H-1B registration process this fiscal year:

• USCIS has increased the H-1B cap registration filing fee from $10.00 per registration to $215.00.
• F-1 students with Optional Practical Training (OPT) or STEM OPT who have a timely filed H-1B cap petition filed on their behalf are eligible for an automatic extension of their authorized employment through April 1, 2026 (referred to as “cap gap”), or until the validity start date of the approved H-1B petition, whichever is earlier. In previous years, cap gap extensions were only provided through the start of USCIS’s fiscal year – October 1.
• USCIS implemented a beneficiary-centric H-1B cap registration process, meaning that the lottery is conducted based upon the beneficiary’s passport or travel document number. In previous years, USCIS’s lottery selections were based on employer registrations. Thus, an individual could increase the odds of selection merely by having multiple employers submit registrations on their behalf. With the beneficiary-centric process, individuals who are selected in the registration lottery are only counted toward the H-1B cap allotment once regardless of how many employers submit registrations on their behalf.

To qualify for H-1B status, under the amended regulations, the proposed role must require at least a bachelor’s degree in a specific specialty, and the beneficiary must possess a bachelor’s degree or higher in a field directly related to the position offered.

Interested employers should identify who they want to sponsor as soon as possible to allow sufficient time for counsel to evaluate the position and the beneficiary’s credentials to ensure that the position qualifies for H-1B status and that the beneficiary possesses the academic credentials to qualify for such status.

To learn more about our Immigration practice, click here.