USCIS Completes Second Lottery for the FY2024 H-1B Cap

On July 31, 2023, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has completed the second lottery from the previously submitted H-1B registrations to reach the annual H-1B quota cap for Fiscal Year 2024 (FY2024). The USCIS selected 77,600 registrations in the second lottery from a possible 758,994 eligible registrations this year, and has 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 selected registration. This year, the second lottery results are quite high relative to the initial selection of 110,791 registrants in the first lottery ran in March 2023. Per the USCIS, the high number of second round selections is due in part to extensive investigations (including denial and revocation of H-1B petitions) to combat fraud and unfair advantages taken by bad actors gaming the H-1B lottery system with multiple registrations for individual beneficiaries. Based on USCIS figures, the overall acceptance rate for the first and second lotteries combined for FY2024 is approximately 24.8%, compared to 26.8% in last year’s lottery.

The H-1B petition filing period for registrants selected in the second lottery will open on August 2 and run through October 31, 2023. We have already notified our clients of all newly selected registrants. While it is possible that the USCIS would run a third lottery for FY2024, we believe that this is fairly unlikely.

We will continue to update our clients with new information about the FY2024 H-1B Cap as more information becomes available.