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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently published fiscal year (FY) 2023 H-1B cap registration statistics, confirming that more than 48,000 prospective petitioners submitted 483,927 registrations—an approximate 57 percent increase over the number of registrations submitted in the FY 2022 filing season. USCIS selected 127,600 FY 2023 registrations in the initial lottery, representing roughly 26 percent of the total registrations. About 31 percent of all eligible registrations requested consideration under the advanced degree exemption.
USCIS takes into account historical data related to approvals, denials, revocations, and other relevant factors to calculate the number of petitions needed to meet the H-1B cap for a given fiscal year. USCIS “consider[s] the number of registrations that need to be selected in order to receive the projected number of petitions required to meet the numerical limitations,” the agency stated. “This calculation incorporates historical rates of non-filing for prospective petitioners whose registrations are selected but who do not file a petition based on those selected registrations.”
In this year’s lottery, USCIS chose a lower percentage of registrations in comparison to the FY 2022 season. For the FY 2022 H-1B cap, USCIS received 308,613 H-1B registrations and initially selected 87,500 registrations. USCIS “conducted a second selection in July 2021 of an additional 27,717 registrations due to low filing volume from the initial selection,” the agency reported. USCIS conducted a third selection in November 2021 of an additional 16,753 registrations, which resulted in a total of 131,970 registrations for FY 2022, bringing the total selection rate closer to 42 percent for the fiscal year.
USCIS will conduct additional selections for the FY 2023 H-1B cap after June 30, 2022, if there is low filing volume again this year.
Ogletree Deakins’ Immigration Practice Group will continue to monitor developments with respect to these and other policies and will post updates on the Immigration blog as additional information becomes available. Important information for employers is also available via the firm’s webinar and podcast programs.
