February 01, 2022
H-1B Cap Lottery Season is Underway
This message is meant only for those clients who are considering filing an H-1B petition in this year’s H-1B Cap Lottery. If that does not apply to you, you may ignore this message.
It’s that time of year again – H-1B Cap Lottery Season!
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on Friday, January 28, 2022, that the initial registration period for the fiscal year 2023 H-1B cap will open on March 1, 2022 and will run through March 18, 2022. This year’s lottery will follow an electronic registration process. Only those registrations submitted during the registration period will be entered into the cap-subject lottery. Those registrants who are selected will then have the opportunity to submit an H-1B petition for adjudication. This year’s lottery will continue to be a random selection and USCIS will notify selected registrants by March 31, 2022.
Our firm will charge for H-1B cap cases in two phases. During Phase 1, we will review the employee candidate’s credentials as well as the offered position, to ensure that they will both meet the minimum qualifications for the H-1B category. We will provide a legal memo to the employer, outlining our review, the likely DOL job code and required wage level. We will complete that review prior to registering the candidate for the lottery. Our firm will be responsible for the registration process itself. Our fixed fee for the work in Phase 1 will be $1000, and is inclusive of the USCIS $10 registration fee.
If a registration is selected in the lottery, then during Phase 2, we will prepare the H-1B petition to file with USCIS during the 90-day eligibility window. Our fixed fee for the work to prepare and file the H-1B petition will be $2500. If the petition receives a “request for evidence” (RFE) from USCIS, we will charge an additional fixed fee to prepare the response. The RFE response fixed fee will be set based on the complexity of the request. Finally, please note that registrants who require Cap Gap work authorization to cover the period from the date their OPT EAD expires until H-1B work starts on October 1, 2022 will require an extra $500 “rush” fee to cover the accelerated preparation of the file.
If you have any employees that you would like to sponsor in the H-1B Cap Lottery, please let us know as soon as possible, and no later than March 4, 2022.