Will USCIS Have a Second H-1B Lottery This Year?
The FY2024 H-1B lottery yielded the largest number of registrations by a landslide in recent memory. There was a total of 780,884 registrations this year, compared to 483,927 in 2022, and 308,613 in 2021.
So what accounted for this huge uptick in registrations? It turned out that may applicants and companies tried to game the system by having multiple entities enter the same person in the lottery. In other words, one applicant would have 4-5 different employers enter them in the lottery thus giving them a better chance of being selected.
In light of this, there may be a chance that USCIS does a second lottery for any unused H-1B’s from the first lottery. While there are no guarantees, we are advising clients to cross their fingers that some of their employees who were not selected in the first round may have some luck in a subsequent drawing.