Employers receiving notifications after 2022 H-1B visa lottery

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) held its annual H-1 visa cap lottery in late March 2022. As of this writing, the first 85,000 cases to be selected for the annual allocation are receiving notifications. Then, the successful employers have 90 days to complete and submit an H-1B petition to the agency for employment to start on October 1, the first day of the federal fiscal year.

Even if you haven’t heard anything yet about your application, all is not lost. Some employers never follow through on their allotments, and USCIS rejects other petitions. So, in the coming months, the agency will conduct additional rounds of H-1B selections until 85,000 have been adjudicated and approved. Continue to check your registrations every few weeks to see if they are selected in the subsequent rounds. The next lottery registration will be in March 2023 for employment to begin on October 1, 2023.

How H-1B visas work

H-1B visas allow employment in “specialty occupations” defined as positions requiring at least (1) a bachelor’s degree in a particular type of field or (2) an equivalent combination of education and experience. Under U.S. immigration law, only 85,000 H-1B visas are available each year, of which 20,000 are reserved for workers with a master’s degree or higher from a U.S. educational institution.