United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has just announced an extension of the H-1B Cap registration period for the fiscal year 2025 H-1B cap. This period opened at noon Eastern Time on March 6, 2024, and would have expired at noon Eastern Time on Friday, March 22, 2024. The registration period will be extended until noon Eastern Time on Monday, March 25, 2024. The extension has been granted based on a temporary system outage that affected a number of registrants and is intended to allow additional time for the filing of registrations. Registrations will not be allowed after noon Eastern Time on March 25th.
During this extended registration period, employers/petitioners that wish to file H-1B petitions to employ foreign nationals in H-1B status during the 2025 fiscal year, which begins on October 1, 2024, may file online registrations for these employees through their myUSCIS Organizational Account portal. After the registration period closes on Monday, March 25th, the USCIS will hold two random selections or lotteries of all the registrations received and will select a certain number among those filed. It had been expected that these lotteries would be held on the weekend of March 23-24, but this will no longer be possible due to the extended registration period. The lotteries will probably be held at some point during the week of March 25 to March 29. Employers/petitioners whose registrations were selected may then file H-1B petitions with the USCIS within a filing window of at least ninety (90) days. The USCIS will notify petitioners whose registrations were selected no later than March 31, 2024.
T&S Takeaway
The extension of the H-1B cap registration period is not entirely unexpected, given the technological glitches that have occurred during the registration process to date. Although employers/petitioners filing registrations now have an extra three days in which to do so, they should pay careful attention to the drafting of their registrations, since even a minor oversight or typographical error could cause them to be denied or could result in erroneous information being conveyed to the USCIS that could result in the denial of an H-1B petition. The attorneys at Tafapolsky & Smith are thoroughly familiar with the intricacies of the H-1B cap registration process and are available to assist any employers that wish to participate in this extended process.
