USCIS: H-1B registration opens March 9 to March 25

The H-1B initial registration period for Financial Year 2022 will open on March 9, 2021 and run through March 25, 2021. An initial registration is the first step towards sponsoring employees to come to the US on an H-1B visa.

During the period, prospective petitioners and their representatives can fill out beneficiary and petitioner information and submit their registrations.

Following successful registration, a confirmation number will be assigned to each of the registrations submitted for the FY 2022 H-1B cap.

The confirmation number is for the purposes of tracking the registration. As per US Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS], “you cannot use this number to track your case status in Case Status Online”.

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Prospective H-1B cap-subject petitioners – or their representatives – will be required to make use of a myUSCIS online account for registering each of the beneficiaries electronically for the selection process.

An associated USD 10 registration fee will have to be paid for each registration that is submitted on behalf of each beneficiary.

This is the second year that an e-registration process for the H-1B has been adopted by USCIS. Earlier, the Biden administration had announced that it would be continuing – until December 31, 2021 – with the traditional lottery system for issuing H-1B visas.

A maximum of 65,000 H-1B visas can be issued annually by USCIS. Another 20,000 H-1B visas in a year can be issued by USCIS to foreign students that had completed their higher education from a US university in STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] subjects.

On January 8, 2021, US Department of Homeland Security [DHS] published a final rule – Modification of Registration Requirement for Petitioners Seeking To File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions – amending regulations governing the H-1B selection process, replacing the lottery-based system with a wage-based selection process. As of February 8, 2021, the effective date for the final rule is delayed to December 31, 2021. Consequently, USCIS will be applying the regulations – of a lottery-based random selection – currently in place to the initial H-1B registration period, as well as any subsequent registration period for the FY 2022 registration that takes place before December 31, 2021.

As per USCIS, following the selection of registrations, notifications will be send, visa myUSCIS online accounts, by March 31, 2021.

An H-1B cap-subject petition might only be filed by a petitioner that had their registration [for that beneficiary] selected in the H-1B registration process.

If you are looking to Study, Work, Visit, Invest or Migrate to the USA, talk to Y-Axis, the World’s No.1 Immigration & Visa Company.

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