Immigration agency will conduct a lottery If it receives enough registrations by March 18
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will open initial registration for H-1B visas coveted by Indian professionals for fiscal year 2023 starting October, from March 1 through March 18.
During this period, prospective petitioners and representatives will be able to complete and submit their registrations using USCIS’ online H-1B registration system, the immigration agency announced Friday.
Read: 23 US lawmakers ask USCIS to fix spousal work permit backlog (December 22, 2021)
USCIS will assign a confirmation number to each registration submitted for the FY 2023 H-1B cap. This number is used solely to track registrations; you cannot use this number to track your case status in Case Status Online.
In recent years, Indian professionals have received about 70% of 85, 000 new H-1B visas for high skilled individuals issued every year, including 20,000 reserved for Masters degree holders from US educational institutions.
Prospective H-1B cap-subject petitioners or their representatives are required to use a myUSCIS online account to register each beneficiary electronically for the selection process and pay the associated $10 H-1B registration fee for each registration submitted on behalf of each beneficiary, USCIS said.
Prospective petitioners submitting their own registrations (US employers and US agents, collectively known as “registrantsâ€) will use a “registrant†account. Registrants will be able to create new accounts beginning at noon EDT on Feb 21.
Representatives may add clients to their accounts at any time, but both representatives and registrants must wait until March 1 to enter beneficiary information and submit the registration with the $10 fee.
Prospective petitioners or their representatives will be able to submit registrations for multiple beneficiaries in a single online session.
Through the account, they will be able to prepare, edit, and store draft registrations prior to final payment and submission of each registration.
Read: FY 2023 H-1B Cap Initial Registration Opens on March 1, 2022 (January 28, 2022)
If the USCIS receives enough registrations by March 18, it will randomly select registrations and send selection notifications via users’ myUSCIS online accounts. USCIS said it intended to notify account holders by March 31.
An H-1B cap-subject petition, including a petition for a beneficiary who is eligible for the advanced degree exemption, may only be filed by a petitioner whose registration for the beneficiary named in the H-1B petition was selected in the H-1B registration process, USCIS said.