United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that it has received enough H-1B petitions to reach the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 65,000 H-1B visa regular cap or quota, as well as the 20,000 H-1B exemption for holders of advanced degrees from United States universities (the master’s cap), for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025. Although the USCIS announcement does not mention this, the allocation for the 20,000 advanced degree or master’s cap was met through the H-1B petitions that were filed during the initial filing period that concluded on June 30th and a second lottery for that allocation was not necessary.
Today’s announcement means that no more H-1B registration applications subject to the H-1B FY2025 cap will be selected. USCIS indicates that it will send non-selection notices to registrants whose registration applications were not selected in the random selection processes or lotteries through their MyUSCIS online accounts within the next few days. Once these non-selection notifications have been sent, the online status for FY2025 registration applications that were not selected will be updated to show the following message:
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- Not Selected: Not selected – not eligible to file an H-1B cap petition based on this registration.
USCIS notes that it will continue to accept and process H-1B petitions that are exempt from the cap. These include H-1B petitions filed for H-1B petition beneficiaries who have previously been counted against the cap. In particular, USCIS states that the following H-1B petitions will continue to be processed without regard to the reaching of the FY2025 cap:
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- H-1B petitions to extend the time a current H-1B beneficiary may remain in the United States;
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- H-1B petitions to change the terms of employment for current H-1B workers;
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- H-1B petitions to allow current H-1B beneficiaries to change employers; and
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- H-1B petitions to allow current H-1B beneficiaries to work concurrently in additional H-1B positions.
H-1B petitions filed by United States universities and related nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organizations and government research organizations are also exempt from the cap. Such petitions may be filed with USCIS at any time of the year without regard to the H-1B cap or quota.
Prospective H-1B beneficiaries whose H-1B FY2025 cap registration applications were not selected may have new registration applications filed in March of next year that will be subject to the FY2026 cap. FY2025 registration applications that were not selected will not automatically be carried over to the FY2026 registration process.
