FY 2025 H‑1B Cap Registration Opens March 6, USCIS Confirms
FY 2025 H‑1B Cap Registration Opens March 6, USCIS Confirms
Summary of FY 2025 H-1B Cap Registration
USCIS has announced that the registration window for the FY 2025 H‑1B cap registration will open on Wednesday, March 6, 2024, at noon ET. The window will close on Friday, March 22, 2024, at noon ET. During this period, employers or their representatives may submit registrations for prospective H‑1B beneficiaries through a myUSCIS online account.
As in prior years, USCIS expects to receive enough registrations to conduct a random selection. Specifically, the agency will select 65,000 beneficiaries under the regular cap. In addition, USCIS will select 20,000 beneficiaries who hold an advanced degree from a U.S. public or nonprofit institution.
Registration Fee for FY 2025
USCIS has confirmed that the final rule increasing the H‑1B registration fee to $215 will not take effect until after the FY 2025 registration period ends. Therefore, the FY 2025 registration fee will remain $10 per beneficiary.
Beneficiary‑Centric Selection System
Under the final rule titled Improving the H‑1B Registration Selection Process and Program Integrity, USCIS will implement a beneficiary‑centric selection system. Under this system, USCIS will select individual beneficiaries rather than groups of registrations.
USCIS adopted this change in response to a sharp increase in multiple registrations for the same beneficiary. For FY 2024, the agency received 780,884 registrations. Of those, 408,891 were eligible registrations for beneficiaries with more than one submission. As a result, the new system aims to improve program integrity and reduce fraud risk. It does so by giving each unique beneficiary an equal chance of selection.
Passport and Travel Document Requirements
The registration system continues to require a valid passport or travel document number for each beneficiary. USCIS has removed the option to bypass this requirement by indicating that a beneficiary does not have a passport. Accordingly, the agency states that the document used at registration should match the document the beneficiary intends to use to enter the United States, if selected.
However, the final rule allows limited flexibility in certain situations. These situations include legal name changes, passport renewals, or changes related to gender identity between registration and petition filing. USCIS may deny or revoke an H‑1B petition if it determines that multiple registrations for the same beneficiary improperly used different passport or travel document information.
For more information, see official guidance from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Our Firm
For questions about how these developments may affect an employer or prospective H‑1B beneficiary, Margaret Wong & Associates LLC provides informational resources regarding the H‑1B program and registration process. Additional details may be found on the firm’s contact page.