On July 27, 2023, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Companies (USCIS) made a big announcement, stating that it’s going to conduct a second random choice from the pool of beforehand submitted FY 2024 H-1B cap registrations. This choice was necessitated by the company’s willpower that extra choices have been required to fulfill the FY 2024 numerical allocations. USCIS plans to pick out extra registrations from the beforehand submitted digital registrations utilizing its random choice course of, and can present updates as soon as this second choice course of is accomplished.

The announcement of a second lottery choice appears to be associated to wide-spread considerations concerning the potential for a number of employers submitting H-1B registrations on behalf of a single beneficiary. The record-breaking 780,000 H-1B lottery registrations this 12 months, with a strikingly low choice price of roughly 14.6%, was largely because of duplicate purposes. The USCIS reported that greater than half the registrations, practically 409,000, have been for potential beneficiaries whose names have been submitted a number of instances. The rise in registrations this 12 months from people whose names have been submitted solely as soon as was a lot smaller — 350,000, up from 309,000 final 12 months. Whereas not explicitly unlawful, this apply has raised substantial considerations throughout the USCIS that sure entities could have collaborated to submit a number of registrations for a similar beneficiary, in an try to control the system and unjustly inflate the probabilities of a beneficiary’s choice within the lottery. Investigations into these considerations had been initiated by USCIS, ensuing within the denial and revocation of sure petitions, in addition to its instituting referrals for potential prison prosecution. The USCIS’s bulletins and the media’s reviews on this matter seem to have led to the supposed “chilling impact” on the variety of precise H-1B petitions filed from those who have been chosen within the preliminary lottery.

The implementation of a second lottery choice, whereas providing a glimmer of hope for a lot of U.S. educated professionals, starkly illuminates the inherent flaws of the present H-1B cap registration course of, particularly the not too long ago launched digital lottery course of. The shortage of any actual safeguards inside this technique led to its foreseeable exploitation. Additional, the exceedingly low annual H-1B quota allocation continues to hamper U.S. enterprise and schooling. Finally, to safe an clever and really merit-based immigration system, and to make sure that the U.S. continues to draw high expertise globally, the registration course of should be redressed, and the annual H-1B cap and the 7% cap on per nation inexperienced card issuance should be considerably elevated.