The H-1B Lottery Results are In! What’s Next?

As of March 31, 2020, USCIS notified all employers which of their employees registrations were chosen in this year’s lottery. Only those who have been selected in the lottery are allowed to file an H-1B petition for this fiscal year.

If a company files an H-1B petition for an employee who was not chosen in the lottery, the H-1B petition will be rejected.

We have provided an example of what to expect of the H-1B electronic registration notice that should be included with the H-1B filing.

Some noteworthy items on the electronic registration notice are the dates of submission for the H-1B petition. On most notices this will indicate the applicable dates of submission , which will be from 04/01/2020 to 06/30/2020, giving the petitioning company the full 90 days to file the petition for their employee. As companies are navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, this extra time to evaluate the situation and file the H-1B will be extremely beneficial.

Another noteworthy detail, as discussed previously, the service center where the H-1B petition MUST be filed is listed in the electronic registration notice.

For the most part though, this registration notice looks similar to other USCIS notices.

I was not selected in the lottery, so what does this mean?

USCIS stated in their recent announcement that all electronic registrations that were not selected during this H-1B lottery will continue to say “submitted” until the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2020.  While it’s not clear, this seems to indicate that in the event H-1B petitions are not submitted when an electronic registration has been selected, USCIS allocate unused numbers to petitions labeled as “submitted.”

Let’s see.

We will provide updates on our website and on our Facebook page.