Category: H-1B Visas

Requirements include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Renewing a prior H-1B visa issued by Mission Canada with an issuance date from 1/1/2020 – 4/1/2023 OR are renewing an H-1B visa issued by Mission India with an issuance date from 2/1/2021 – 9/30/2021
2. Not subject to a nonimmigrant visa reciprocity fee (which can be found here: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/Visa-Reciprocity-and-Civil-Documents-by-Country.html)
3. Eligible for a waiver of the in-person interview requirement
4. Have submitted fingerprints with a prior visa application (If you ever had a nonimmigrant visa interview (and you were 14-79 years old at the time) and your visa was issued in or after January, 2008, you should have been ten printed.)
5. Prior visa does not include a “clearance received” annotation
6. Were most recently admitted to the U.S. in H-1B status

The State Department will begin accepting online applications on January 29, 2024 via https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/employment/domestic-renewal.html. They will limit application slots each week to 2000 for those renewing a visa issued by Mission Canada, and 2000 for those renewing a visa issued by Mission India. Once the 2000 weekly limit is reached for each Mission, the online portal will be locked until the next portion of slots are released the next week.

If you have questions about your eligibility and/or wish to submit an application, please contact my office for a consultation.

USCIS announced on 12/13/2023 that it received a sufficient number of petitions needed to reach the congressionally mandated 65,000 H-1B visa regular cap and the 20,000 H-1B visa U.S. advanced degree exemption, known as the master’s cap, for fiscal year (FY) 2024.

USCIS will send non-selection notices to registrants through their online accounts over the next few days. Upon completion of the non-selection notifications, the status for properly submitted registrations that were not selected for the FY 2024 H-1B numerical allocations will show: Not Selected: Not selected – not eligible to file an H-1B cap petition based on this registration.

We are now beginning to work on H-1B cap cases for FY2025. If you have a cap case or questions about a potential H-1B cap case, please contact my office.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that the initial registration period for the fiscal year 2024 H-1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 1 and run through noon Eastern on March 17, 2023. During this period, prospective petitioners and representatives will be able to complete and submit their registrations using our online H-1B registration system.

USCIS will assign a confirmation number to each registration submitted for the FY 2024 H-1B cap. This number is used solely to track registrations; you cannot use this number to track your case status in Case Status Online.

Prospective H-1B cap-subject petitioners or their representatives are required to use a myUSCIS online account to register each beneficiary electronically for the selection process and pay the associated $10 H-1B registration fee for each registration submitted on behalf of each beneficiary. Prospective petitioners submitting their own registrations (U.S. employers and U.S. agents, collectively known as “registrants”) will use a “registrant” account. Registrants will be able to create new accounts beginning at noon Eastern on Feb. 21.

Representatives may add clients to their accounts at any time, but both representatives and registrants must wait until March 1 to enter beneficiary information and submit the registration with the $10 fee. Prospective petitioners or their representatives will be able to submit registrations for multiple beneficiaries in a single online session. Through the account, they will be able to prepare, edit, and store draft registrations prior to final payment and submission of each registration.

If USCIS receives enough registrations by March 17, they will randomly select registrations and send selection notifications via users’ myUSCIS online accounts. If they do not receive enough registrations, all registrations that were properly submitted in the initial registration period will be selected. USCIS intends to notify account holders by March 31.

We will be registering H-1B cap cases in March for submission in the lottery for FY2024.

Attention employers: If you have employees who need to be registered for the lottery, contact me as soon as possible to make sure you don’t miss a lottery opportunity this year.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received enough electronic registrations during the initial registration period to reach the fiscal year (FY) 2023 H-1B numerical allocations (H-1B cap), including the advanced degree exemption (master’s cap). We randomly selected from among the registrations properly submitted to reach the cap. We have notified all prospective petitioners with selected registrations that they are eligible to file an H-1B cap-subject petition for the beneficiary named in the applicable selected registration.