The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has said that it completed its second round of random selection for the H-1B visa, permitting companies from the US to employ international workers engaged in specific fields.
Through a statement, the USCIS announced that all successful candidates eligible for the H-1B visas for the fiscal year starting October 1 have been notified about it, VisaGuide.World reports.
“We now have randomly selected, from the remaining FY 2024 registrations properly submitted, a sufficient number of registrations projected as needed to reach the cap,” the statement from the USCIS notes.
The second round of the H-1B lottery was conducted after, in the first round in April, a large number of unqualified applications got selected.
“The large number of eligible registrations for beneficiaries with multiple eligible registrations – much larger than in previous years – has caused serious concerns that some may have tried to gain an unfair advantage by working together to submit multiple registrations on behalf of the same beneficiary,” the agency pointed out through a statement.
The same noted that this may unfairly increase their chances of selection. The USCIS said that it continues to remain committed to deterring and also to stop the abuse of the registration process and also to ensure only those who follow the law are able to file an H-1B cap petition.
In addition, the agency noted that the H-1B electronic registration process implemented in 2020 started with the fiscal 2021 H-1B cap, has significantly streamlined processing by minimizing paperwork as well as data exchange, and provides overall cost savings to petitioning employers.
The USCIS is expected to accept a low number of H-1B registrations from the H-1B lottery’s first selection round.
Besides, according to an analysis from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) of the selection rounds for the FY 2024 H-1B cap, USCIS officials believe just 50,000 or fewer H-1B registrations from the first selection earlier this year will result in approved H-1B petitions.
In spite of the fact that multiple entries for the same individuals during the H-1B registration process have led to uncertainty over the H-1B selection process. However, the USCIS data reveals that due to the low annual H-1B limit, more than 75 percent of H-1B registrations for the fiscal year 2024 would have been rejected even if beneficiaries with multiple registrations were excluded from the H-1B work visa lottery.