USCIS Announces H-1B Cap Has Been Reached for Fiscal Year 2025

At a Glance

• As in FY 2024, a third round of the lottery was not necessary to meet the congressionally mandated H-1B numbers for FY 2025.
• The FY 2025 registration process was the first under USCIS’s new beneficiary-centric process, in which registrations were selected by unique beneficiary rather than by registration. Overall, USCIS saw an average of 1.06 registrations per beneficiary this year in FY 2025, compared to 1.70 for FY 2024.
• Remember that the following H-1B petitions are not subject to the cap: (1) change of employer, extension and amendment petitions for individuals already working in H-1B status with a cap-subject employer; (2) petitions filed by institutions of higher education and their related nonprofits; and (3) petitions for J-1 physicians who receive a waiver of the two-year home residence requirements.

On December 2, 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has received enough petitions to meet the annual numerical allocation of 85,000 H-1B visas for fiscal year 2025 (FY 2025), which includes 65,000 regular and 20,000 U.S. advanced-degree cap petitions.

Over the next few days, USCIS will upload electronic nonselection notices for each unsuccessful entry to the myUSCIS account of employers or their representatives. When USCIS finishes sending these nonselection notifications, the status for properly submitted registrations that were not selected for the FY 2025 H-1B numerical allocations will show as Not Selected: Not selected — not eligible to file an H-1B cap petition based on this registration. Registrants who are not selected in the lottery do not need to disclose the attempt in future immigration filings, including on Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker. However, it is important for employers or their representatives to download and save nonselection notices for recordkeeping purposes, as the notices will become inaccessible if access to the myUSCIS account used for the registration is lost in the future.

The FY 2025 registration process was the first under USCIS’s new beneficiary-centric process in which registrations were selected by unique beneficiary rather than by registration. At the beginning of this year, USCIS announced a final rule to strengthen integrity and reduce the potential for fraud in the H-1B registration process, including by ensuring that each beneficiary would have the same chance of being selected, regardless of the number of registrations submitted on their behalf. The final rule created a beneficiary-centric selection process for registrations by employers, codified start-date flexibility for certain petitions subject to the congressionally mandated H-1B cap, and added more integrity measures related to the registration process. During the registration period for the FY 2025 H-1B cap, USCIS reported seeing a significant decrease in the total number of registrations submitted compared to FY 2024, including a decrease in the number of registrations submitted on behalf of beneficiaries with multiple registrations. Overall, USCIS saw an average of 1.06 registrations per beneficiary this year in FY 2025, compared to 1.70 for FY 2024.

For FY 2025, USCIS received 479,953 total registrations, 470,342 of which were eligible registrations. Of those 470,342 eligible registrations, 423,028 were for beneficiaries with no other eligible registrations and 47,314 were for beneficiaries with multiple eligible registrations. Ultimately, as total selected registrations numbered 135,137, this year’s selection rate was just under 29%.

Not All H-1B Cases Are Subject to the Cap Lottery

As an important reminder, not all H-1B cases are subject to the cap lottery. Only for-profit (cap-subject) employers seeking to file new employment H-1B petitions or change-of-employer petitions from a cap-exempt entity (such as an institution of higher education) are required to submit registrations in the lottery process. The following H-1B petitions are not currently subject to the cap: (1) change of employer, extension and amendment petitions for individuals already working in H-1B status with a cap-subject employer; (2) petitions filed by institutions of higher education and nonprofit organizations that are related to such institutions; and (3) petitions for J-1 physicians who receive a waiver of the two-year home residence requirements.

For More Information

For additional information, register for Faegre Drinker’s Immigration and Global Mobility practice’s December 10, 2024, Business Immigration Series Webinar: It’s a Wrap! Update on Immigration Trends and What’s Ahead in 2025 After the Presidential Election, for a discussion about temporary work visas, permanent residence and compliance issues specific to business immigration.