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The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced preliminary details regarding the H-1B cap registration process for fiscal year (FY) 2021. The H-1B cap registration process will require employers seeking to file H-1B cap cases to first register online to enter the H-1B lottery. If an H-1B registration is selected by USCIS during the lottery, an employer will have a filing period of at least 90 days to file a complete H-1B petition. The H-1B cap registration requires a $10 non-refundable registration fee for each registration. Batch registrations and payments will be accepted in the online portal.

USCIS will announce on its website the date when employers and their representatives may start setting up online registration accounts for the FY 2021 cap season. In the coming weeks, USCIS is expected to issue further instructions about setting up registration accounts and conduct public outreach on the process.

USCIS has also confirmed that the initial H-1B cap registration period is expected to run from March 1, 2020 through March 20, 2020. The actual registration end date will be announced on USCIS’s website. USCIS may extend the registration period in the event that there are any system issues to the online registration or if it does not receive enough registrations to meet the annual quotas.

After a lottery process to choose the registration beneficiaries to meet the annual H-1B cap of 85,000, USCIS will notify petitioners of the beneficiaries selected no later than March 31, 2020 by electronic selection notices. USCIS will announce the exact dates of the petition filing period in the coming weeks, and the petition filing period will be open for at least 90 days.

Our office will provide further information as it becomes available regarding this matter.