USCIS Completes FY2023 H-1B Cap Selection Process

The U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the annual limit for new H-1B cap-subject petitions has been reached for the Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023). Consequently, there will be no second cap lottery selection this year. 

This year the USCIS received 483,927 unique H-1B cap registrations, well above the 308,613 registrations received during the FY2022 cap lottery. The USCIS also reported that more than 48,000 prospective H-1B petitioners submitted H-1B registrations, a significant increase from last year’s 37,000 prospective petitioners.  

For the FY2023 lottery, the USCIS selected 127,600 registrations to meet the annual H-1B numerical limitation (26.36% overall selection rate). After this first lottery selection, the USCIS announced that it has reached the annual H-1B numerical limitation and it does not need to conduct any additional lottery selections for FY2023. Each year, the annual H-1B numerical limitation allocates a total of 85,000 new H-1Bs of which 20,000 are reserved for advanced degree holders graduating from U.S. universities. This year, approximately 31% of all eligible FY2023 registrations were U.S. advanced degree holders.

In comparison, last year the USCIS selected 87,500 registrations in the initial lottery selection, which led the USCIS to conduct two additional lottery selections to meet the annual limitations. In July 2021, the USCIS conducted a second selection of 27,717 registrations. In November 2021, the USCIS conducted a third and final selection of 16,753 registrations to meet the annual quotas. This resulted in a total of 131,970 selected registrations for the FY2022 H-1B cap lottery (42.76% overall selection rate).

The USCIS has sent out notifications on all non-selected cases to registrants’ online accounts. We will notify our clients that have received a non-selection notice and provide them with guidance on any next steps.