Everything You Need To Know About The H-1B Lottery 2021

OnlineVisas Lead Attorney and CEO Jon Velie shares everything you need to know about registering for the H-1B visa lottery in March 2021 for fiscal year 2022.

We are just days away from H-1B Registration, which is open from March 9^th at 12 PM EST to March 25 at 12 PM EST. The lottery winners will be notified on or by March 31.

Here is what you need to know: 

1. Employers must pre-register their workers

Each petitioning company will need to create an account at my.uscis.gov. We have provided the link to the step-by-step instructions for registrants from USCIS in the description below. 

An account in the name of the typical signatory for immigration forms will need to be created. In other words, the individual creating this account should be the person that will sign your I-129 and G-28 forms.

Petitioners will need to provide a unique email address for the account, create a password, select a method for two-factor authentication, and provide security question answers for account retrieval. When asked to create an account type, select “I am an H-1B registrant.”

This is very important: DO NOT REGISTER YOUR OWN APPLICANTS unless you have specifically informed your attorney that you will be doing so. If you create a separate registration from the one your attorney creates for you, BOTH WILL BE DENIED.

At our law firm, on March 9^th through the 25^th, H-1B registrants will be entered by our team. For our corporate clients, we will do the registrations free of charge, they will just need to pay the $10 registration fee. 

2. USCIS will conduct the lottery and choose the beneficiaries that will go on to be filed and processed.

3. Within 90 days, the selected registrants’ employers will then file their petitions with USCIS for processing along with filing fees and their supporting documents.

4. If the petition is approved, the H-1b visa will be issued and the beneficiary’s start date will be October 21, 2021.

Each sponsor may only submit one registration for each beneficiary. If a single sponsor submits more than one registration for the same beneficiary, all registrations submitted by that sponsor for that beneficiary will be considered invalid and subsequently denied.

• However, a single sponsor can submit registrations for multiple beneficiaries and;
• A single beneficiary can have registrations submitted by multiple sponsors.

See the video above to get all the details.