Last week, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the initial registration period for the fiscal year 2026 H-1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 7 and run through noon Eastern on March 24, 2025.
USCIS holds a lottery when there are more applicants for H-1B visas than there are available visas—65,000 plus 20,000 for potential employees who graduated with a Masters or PhD degree from an American institution of higher learning. There have been more applicants than visas for so long that we simply refer to it as the H-1B visa lottery.
The H-1B process is different from other visas in that the application is filed by employers who want to employ highly skilled foreign nationals on behalf of the potential employee. In recent years, the lottery odds got long when many employers filed applications on behalf of the same potential employees, but USCIS addressed that last year by making the process more “beneficiary-centric” in their words.
All the applications in a foreign national’s name were treated as one entry, and if the person’s number came up, they could decide which employer to go with. Since that improved the odds of applicants receiving H-1B visas, we hope that change will continue.
Will it? We haven’t heard anything to the contrary yet so we assume the process will remain the same, but no one can reliably predict what the current administration will do. Earlier this year, intramural fights of H-1B visas broke out among his supporters as nativists opposed them and the tech sector that supports him and relies on H-1B visas argued for their importance. We addressed the numerous factual inaccuracies in that argument earlier this year.
The argument died down as other controversies bubbled up, and that roil will likely keep the issue from resurfacing in a way that will affect this year’s visa lottery. Still, it’s a good idea to be ready to apply when the window opens on March 7.
If you need help navigating the application process or seeing how H-1B visas could help you and your company, consult an experienced immigration lawyer who can help you work up a strategic approach.
Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash.
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