H-1B Registration Opens March 9

Author: Michael Cardman, XpertHR Legal Editor

February 23, 2021

The initial H-1B registration period for fiscal year 2022 will open at noon Eastern time on March 9 and close on March 25, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced.

The H-1B nonimmigrant visa program allows employers to temporarily hire foreign workers such as doctors, lawyers and engineers in specialty occupations that require the application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor's degree or its equivalent.

There are only 65,000 new H-1B visas available each year, plus an extra 20,000 H-1B visas for foreign nationals holding a master's degree or higher from US universities.

Last year, USCIS implemented a new process for the H-1B cap, under which employers and their representatives are required to electronically register each candidate for selection through https://my.uscis.gov/.

If the number of registrations exceeds the H-1B quota, USCIS runs a lottery on the electronic submissions. Only those candidates chosen in the lottery are authorized to have employers submit a full H-1B petition on their behalf to USCIS for adjudication. Employers have 90 days after being notified of selection to file the full H-1B cap petitions.

Although some modifications were to be made to registration requirements by March 9, the implementation of the relevant regulation has been delayed until December 31.