Immigration News Alert: USCIS to Conduct Second Random Selection for FY2025 H-1B Quota Lottery

On July 30, 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it will conduct a second random selection of FY2025 H-1B quota registrations for the H-1B Regular quota.  FY2025 (October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025) H-1B approvals are limited to 65,000 with an additional 20,000 for individuals who earned a U.S. Master’s or higher degree. USCIS has not stated the total number of FY2025 H-1B quota petitions approved to date; but indicated that it received enough H-1B petitions to meet the FY2025 Master’s quota from the first random selection.  Individuals who earned a U.S. Master’s or higher degree who were not previously selected, remain eligible to be selected to the H-1B Regular quota during the second random selection. Unselected individuals registered under the Regular Quota also remain eligible to be selected to the H-1B Regular quota during the second random selection. USCIS is not accepting new registrations for the FY2025 H-1B quota.

After USCIS completes the second random selection round, it will notify petitioners (and/or their attorneys of record) of the selected registrations via an update to their USCIS online account and provide information on the window of time to file the FY2025 H-1B quota petition for the selected individual. The USCIS indicated that it will post an announcement when the second random selection process has been completed.

USCIS recently provided data on the top 100 employers having FY2024 H-1B approvals through June 30, 2024, with the top ten including:

Additional information about the FY2025 H-1B quota will be contained in future Masuda Funai newsletters and alerts when they become available.

Masuda Funai is a full-service law firm with offices in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Schaumburg^.