USCIS Announces Timeline for the Fiscal Year 2020 H-1B Cap Registration Process

Link: https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/fy-2023-h-1b-cap-initial-registration-period-opens-on-march-1

Pasricha & Patel

USCIS has announced that the registration period for the upcoming Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 H-1B quota will start at 12 p.m. EST on Tuesday, March 1, 2022 and run through 12 p.m. EST on Friday, March 18, 2022.

If USCIS receives enough registrations by March 18, 2022, it will randomly select registrations and send selection notifications via the account users’ myUSCIS online accounts. USCIS’s plan is to notify all account holders by March 31, 2022, at the latest.

Following the same procedures that were announced in the year 2021 (The fiscal Year 2022), potential H-1B cap filing petitioners or their legal representatives must utilize their myUSCIS online account to register each beneficiary electronically for the selection process.

They must pay a $10.00 non-refundable H-1B registration fee for each registration that is submitted on behalf of the H-1B beneficiary.

U.S. employers may decide to submit their own registrations and they can use a separate registrant account to do so.

The H-1B beneficiary is NOT allowed to register their own names in the registration system. Only the U.S. employer/petitioner or their legal representatives can register.

The U.S. employer/petitioner may only submit one (1) registration per H-1B beneficiary. Should the USCIS discover that multiple registrations were submitted for the same H-1B beneficiary by the same employer, all the registrations for that H-1B beneficiary will be deemed invalid.

Any U.S. employer/petitioner who has not utilized this H-1B quota registration process before, or who do not have their own H-1B registration with myUSCIS account before, will be able to create new accounts beginning at 12 p.m. EST on Monday, February 21, 2022.

Once registered, the USCIS will issue a confirmation number to each registration submitted during the H-1B registration period. This number is used to track registrations. It is not a case status number and it cannot be used to check the USCIS Case Status Online system later on.

The H-1B cap-subject petition may only be filed by the U.S. employer/petitioner whose registration for the specific H-1B beneficiary was selected in the H-1B registration process.

Finally, a reminder that USCIS has recently decided not to proceed with a modified H-1B selection process rule that would have changed the H-1B registration process into a wage based selection process. That is no longer USCIS’s plans moving forward.

Therefore, the FY 2023 H-1B selection process will continue to be a random selection process as in years’ past.

As we approach the annual H-1B cap period, there may be news or more developments that affect this process. We recommend readers to continue to check back with our site for any information updates.

Should you have any specific questions about the H-1B registration and filing processes, or if you have any other immigration-related questions, we suggest you contact our office to schedule formal consultation so we can discuss the matter further.