Businesses Prep H-1B Backups as Revamped Visa Lottery Opens

Companies that rely on skilled foreign workers are already thinking through fallback options if the upcoming H-1B visa lottery doesn’t go their way.

This year’s selection process—which opens to registrations March 4—is the first under a framework awarding better odds to higher paid workers. That’s added more pressure than ever to prepare more complex lottery entries and plan for contingencies after the selection concludes.

The lottery overhaul means much lower odds of landing one of 85,000 H-1B slots for recent graduates or early career workers in fields like tech, engineering, and health care. It’s prompting businesses to consider alternative visa options to fill labor needs.

“It’s a critical time to look into your bag of tricks,” said Ali Brodie, immigration practice co-chair at Fox Rothschild LLP.

Reshaping the H-1B program, which is most heavily used for tech hiring, has been the cornerstone of the Trump agenda on employment-based immigration. While it advanced the new lottery system last year, the administration also added a new $100,000 fee for H-1B workers hired from outside the US—a charge that will apply to most employers for the first time after this selection process.

Those that do enter the lottery can also expect more scrutiny of petitions if workers are selected, attorneys say.

“Without question, the amount of prep that’s going into this lottery far exceeds anything previously,” said Scott Gorski, a business immigration partner at Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer.

Shifting Lottery Odds

In previous years, entering the lottery was essentially “a data entry exercise,” said Emily Allen, a partner at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP. This year, they’ll need to have an array of information prepared on a worker’s role, location, and the salary they’ll be paid starting in October when H-1B positions become available.

Regulations finalized by the Department of Homeland Security in December will base workers’ odds of winning the H-1B lottery on which of four wage levels their position falls into for a given field and geographic market. Entry-level workers will only be entered once; the most senior-level workers in a field will be entered four times.

That translates to roughly a 15% chance of selection for “Level I” workers, including most recent graduates on F-1 student status. Workers in Level IV, the highest wage bracket, would have a 61% chance of selection, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Those odds are factoring into the decisions of many employers to register employees for the lottery, attorneys said.

The $100,000 fee is expected to spell a sharp reduction in entries for workers currently outside of the US—most of them by IT consulting giants. But that still may not offset the reduced chances of selection for recent graduates and other younger workers.

“It is changing who is entered in the H-1B lottery,” Allen said of the lottery rule.

Contingency planning around lottery results has always been a part of the H-1B registration cycle. Now, Allen said, firms “are doing it earlier and more thoroughly than ever.”

Alternatives could include applying for O-1 extraordinary ability visas, using country-based visa pathways such as the TN for North American professionals, and sponsoring workers for green cards.

Each option comes with their own challenges and more narrow eligibility than the H-1B. Green cards, for example, have annual per country caps, and the Labor Department certification process employers must clear to sponsor a worker has seen mounting backlogs.

Some employers may also offer higher pay to improve a worker’s odds although that could disrupt their own internal wage systems. And salaries that don’t match job duties could trigger scrutiny or denials from USCIS.

Evolving Lottery System

Online registration for the H-1B lottery was first introduced in 2020 under the first Trump administration, with a registration fee of only $10.

The low barrier to entry and high demand for foreign talent led to steadily growing registration numbers. USCIS under the Biden administration concluded skyrocketing lottery entries also stemmed from employers gaming the system by entering workers multiple times with sham job offers.

The agency adopted regulations in 2024 to give each worker the same odds of selection no matter how many businesses agreed to enter them in the lottery. It separately hiked registration costs to $215 as part of a larger fee update.

The Trump administration though said the process was still open to exploitation and abuse by employers.

Now workers’ chances of landing an H-1B slot won’t depend on how many offers they get, but the salary and seniority of the position offered. The weighted selection framework would incentivize businesses to petition for higher-paid and higher-skilled foreign workers, USCIS said in announcing the rule.

“If properly monitored and scrutinized for integrity, H-1B can be a useful tool,” USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said at a National Press Club event last year. “But my big concern is the way it keeps US citizens out of the job market, especially recent STEM graduates.”

The agency has made clear that it will reject petitions for workers who unfairly benefit from an employment change to boost an employee’s chances of selection.

Employers will need to know more about the location of their workforce both before and after the lottery takes place, said Dan Maranci, a partner at WR Immigration. The agency will scrutinize any worker moves “that look like you’re going from an area with lower wages to an area with higher wages,” after the lottery, he said.

Gorski of HSF Kramer said employers trying to game the new system are likely in for a rude awakening.

“The government is going to be looking for that kind of foul play,” he said.