Shocking! US Govt Reopens H1B Visa Lottery As They Fail To Get Enough Applications; H1B Losing Charm?

As per new reports, coming in, the USCIS will be reopening the H-1B lottery now as the number of petitions was not sufficient and failed to meet the annual cap.

What happens now? Read on for more information on the lottery for H-1B reopening right here!

USCIS Reopens H-1B Visa Lottery As The Number Of Petitions Doesn’t Meet Annual Target

As we all know, the H-1B visa is handed out through a lottery process which is conducted by randomly selecting the required number of H-1B applicants from a huge amount of applicants. Also, there is a cap on the number of applications that are submitted to the H-1B lottery pool. The cap for the financial year 2021 was 85000.

However as the target for the number of petitions wasn’t reached, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that they will be reopening the H-1B lottery. 

In a statement, they said, “The USCIS determined that additional registrations needed to be selected to reach the numerical allocations. A selection of previously submitted electronic registrations was completed on August 11.”

The new H-1B Electronic Registration Process required that employers should register with the USCIS by March 20. The lottery process starts after this deadline. Once the lottery is finished, potential beneficiaries who can start the process of application are announced by the agency. 

Time to File Petition For H-1B Visa Starts On August 17: USCIS

As per reports, after the lottery selection in March, the H-1B visa aspirants were given a three month window that started from April 1 and ended on June 30 to file their applications. The cap on these applications was 65000 in regular quota and 20000 in advanced quota.

About 2.67 lakh people had registered for the lottery and the candidates for the second lottery have been selected from these registrations by the USCIS. As per USCIS, those who wish to file petitions for H-1B Visa can do so between the time period of August 17 and November 16.

As per reports, this is an incident that has never happened before. Apparently all the petitions would be filed within only a few days and the situation might have happened because of the global battle with the coronavirus pandemic.