H-1B Specialty Occupation Visa Cap Reached for Fiscal Year 2024

Employers have submitted enough petitions for H-1B specialty occupation visas to reach the annual limit of 85,000 for fiscal year 2024, US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Wednesday.

USCIS received more than 780,000 employer registrations for the visas this year, with more than half of them submitted on behalf of workers with multiple registrations.

The jump in submissions from previous years—in particular for workers with multiple registrations—led the agency to highlight concerns about attempts to game the selection process.

A lottery is held after the March registration deadline to select which employers can move ahead with petitions for the visas, which are most heavily used for tech occupations.

Proposed regulations released in October would overhaul the H-1B lottery system by basing selections on each individual beneficiary, not the total number of registrations. That change would give workers an equal chance of being selected in the lottery process, the agency said.

USCIS meanwhile has opened fraud investigations into alleged efforts to cheat the lottery that could lead to denial of petitions or referrals to law enforcement. The agency is still taking petitions for visas exempt from the H-1B cap, such as those for jobs at colleges and universities or research institutions.