US Citizenship and Immigration Services completed a second lottery to meet the 2024 fiscal year cap for H-1B specialty occupation visas, the agency announced Tuesday.
Employers with selected registrations are eligible to move ahead with visa petitions. Only those that registered by a March deadline were eligible for the second lottery.
The agency received more than 780,000 employer registrations this year for H-1B visas, which are in especially high demand in the tech and engineering sectors. That number eclipsed the previous high of 483,000 in the prior year, but USCIS said that it suggested attempts to game the system.
More than half of eligible registrations named beneficiaries with multiple employers registering for the lottery on their behalf. If USCIS finds that registrations don’t reflect a legitimate offer or that employers have colluded with other registrants, it can deny petitions or refer entities to law enforcement. The agency has already undertaken fraud investigations involving petitions for the past two fiscal years.
To contact the reporter on this story:
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Learn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading:
See Breaking News in Context
Bloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis.
Already a subscriber?
Log in to keep reading or access research tools and resources.