FY 2025 H1B cap registration period details announced: Here's what you need to know

H1B registration opens for the new fiscal year. Applicants required to use a USCIS online account to register.

Just in time for the fiscal year 2025 cap season, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has shifted the H1B registration process online. As a means to streamline the process, this step hopes to reduce paperwork and promote overall cost savings to employers seeking to file H-1B petitions. Filing a form online also hands over the additional advantage of tracking your case online. The H-1B cap will close over a week later on Friday, March 22, at noon ET. The newly launched myUSCIS organisational accounts also seek to encourage multiple people within an organisation and their legal representatives to band together and prepare the H-1B registrations. During the cap period, prospective petitioners must use the online account to register the beneficiary electronically for further vetting during the selection process.

In a huge relief for H-1B visa holders, a White House-backed bipartisan deal has been unveiled under which automatic work authorisation would be granted to about 100,000 H-4 visa holders, who are spouses and children of a certain category of H-1B visa holders. (Representational image) (HT_PRINT)

The initial registration period requires registrants to hand over valid passport information and valid travel document information. The passport or travel document in question should be the one which the beneficiary intends to use to enter the US upon being issued an H-1B visa.

USCIS announces 2025 H1B registration process

Initially, the lottery system randomly selected applicants eligible for the visa application. However, the model has transitioned for the new fiscal year. As mentioned above, this year's registration process makes it mandatory for registrants to provide their travel document information during the initial steps.

Taking the shape of a beneficiary-centric system, the FY 2025 H-1B registration will maintain its fee of $10, ruling out the previously suggested increase to $215. This will likely follow after the recently announced period's conclusion in March 2025. Moreover, the new transition limits each employee's selection to once in a lottery as opposed to their previous multiple entries.

The latest update on the electronic registration process has proposed that USCIS service centres will no longer accept Form I-129 petitions on April 1, 2024. All H-1B or H-1B1 (HSC) petitions received on or after April 1 will be rejected, with no provision for any grace period.

From April 1 onwards, all paper-filed Form I-129 petitions must be filed- at a USCIS lockbox facility. Online filing of Form I-129 and Form I-907 for non-cap H1B petitions will open in March.