U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that the H-1B lottery will be moving forward under the same procedures established during last year’s H-1B lottery. The FY 2022 cap registration period will open at noon EST on March 9, 2021 and will close at noon EST on March 25, 2021. See here.

USCIS has delayed the implementation of a regulation promulgated by the Trump Administration that attempted to replace the random, computerized registration lottery with a selection process based on the Department of Labor’s wage level system. The delay in implementation is to enable the Biden Administration time to fully evaluate the rule before it takes effect.

As before, USCIS will conduct two randomized lotteries to select enough beneficiaries to meet the 85,000 annual cap. USCIS is expected to receive far more H-1B cap registrations than needed to meet the annual quota of 85,000.

USCIS intends to notify sponsoring employers of selected entries by March 31, 2021. Employers may submit petitions for selected registrations starting April 1, 2021. The petition filing period will close no earlier than June 30, 2021.