The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has completed the selection of H-1B petitions through a lottery for FY22. The selected petitioners can start filing applications from April 1, 2021.
Petitions have been selected for both regular and advanced degrees. “We have notified all prospective petitioners with selected registrations that they are eligible to file an H-1B cap-subject petition for the beneficiary named in the applicable selected registration,” the USCIS said.
The US issues 85,000 H-1B visas per year. Indians and Indian IT firms are one of the largest beneficiaries of the US.
The immigration agency did not reveal the number of petitions received. However, every year registrations exceed the total visas issued by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Last year, the USCIS received close to 2.67 lakh registrations of which more than 60 percent were from India.
In such instances, the USCIS used the random selection process to select the candidates. However, at the back of COVID-19, the immigration agency had to go for a second lottery in 2020, for the first time in 30 years, as it did not get enough applications to fill the annual quota of 85,000 visas.
Wage-based selection
This is also likely to be the last year where a lottery-based selection would be used. This could be replaced with a wage-based selection of applications starting next year.
The wage-based selection of H-1B petitions that was expected to come into effect on March 9, 2021, is under review by the Biden administration. The administration has currently put this on hold till December 31, 2021.
This would impact the hiring of freshers and those with fewer years of experience as those with higher salaries have better chances of getting selected.
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