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Foreign talent looking to live and work in America look forward to securing a H-1B visa. Unlike in the past, the US has now modified the registration process for H-1B visas.
US has put in place a beneficiary-centric selection process for H-1B registrations. In the beneficiary-centric selection process, instead of selecting by registration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will select registrations by unique beneficiary.
Each unique beneficiary who has a registration submitted on their behalf will be entered into the selection process once, regardless of how many registrations are submitted on their behalf.
If a beneficiary is selected, each registrant who submitted a registration on that beneficiary’s behalf will be notified of the beneficiary’s selection and will be eligible to file a petition on that beneficiary’s behalf during the applicable petition filing period.
The reason to change to a beneficiary-centric selection process for H-1B registrations was to reduce the potential for gaming the process to increase chances for selection and help ensure that each beneficiary has the same chance of being selected, regardless of how many registrations are submitted on their behalf.
Compared to the erstwhile lottery system, the latest H-1B cap registration data shows the present the beneficiary-centric selection process has met the objective of not allowing companies and individuals to game the system.
The 2026 H-1B fiscal year registration window is expected to open in early March 2025.
The FY 2025 H-1B cap registration data shows fewer unfair advantage attempts compared to previous years, largely due to the beneficiary-centric selection process.
US received enough electronic registrations during the initial registration period to reach the fiscal year 2025 H-1B numerical allocations (H-1B cap), including the advanced degree exemption, also known as the master’s cap.
From the total registrations received, 114,017 beneficiaries were selected, resulting in 120,603 selected registrations in the initial selection for the FY 2025 H-1B cap.
USCIS subsequently announced that they would need to select additional registrations for unique beneficiaries to reach the FY 2025 regular cap numerical allocations. Thereafter, 13,607 beneficiaries in the second selection for the FY 2025 H-1B regular cap were selected, resulting in 14,534 selected registrations.
As announced on December 2, 2024, USCIS received enough petitions 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 2025.
During the registration period for the FY 2025 H-1B cap, there was a significant decrease in the total number of registrations submitted compared to FY 2024, including a decrease in the number of registrations submitted on behalf of beneficiaries with multiple registrations.
The number of unique beneficiaries this year for FY 2025 (approximately 442,000) was comparable to the number last year for FY 2024 (approximately 446,000). Also, the number of unique employers this year for FY 2025 (approximately 52,700) was comparable to the number last year for FY 2024 (approximately 52,000).
The number of eligible registrations, however, was down dramatically for FY 2025 (470,342) compared with FY 2024 (758,994) — a 38.6% reduction. Overall, there was an average of 1.06 registrations per beneficiary this year in FY 2025, compared to 1.70 for FY 2024.
Source: https://www.financialexpress.com/business/investing-abroad-h-1b-visa-new-registration-process-ends-up-preventing-unfair-advantages-3721148/
