2023 is the worst year for H-1B lottery?

Recently, USCIS (US Citizenship & Immigration Services) announced that it had received enough electronic registrations during the initial registration period to reach the annual cap for FY 2024.

Registrants’ online accounts will now show the following four statuses：

Submitted: A registration status may continue to show “Submitted” after the initial selection process has been completed. “Submitted” registrations will remain in consideration for selection until the end of the fiscal year.

Selected: Selected to file an H-1B cap petition for FY 2024. This means that employers will be able to proceed with preparing and submitting a petition on behalf of selected candidates.

Denied: This status will show if a duplicate registration was submitted by the same employer for the same candidate, or if a payment method was declined and not reconciled. USCIS states that if a registration was denied as a duplicate, all registrations submitted for the candidate for FY 2024 are invalid.

Invalidated-Failed Payment: This will display for cases where the registration was submitted but the payment method was declined, not reconciled, or was otherwise invalid.

As we know, the number of total registrations submitted as part of the annual lottery selection process has increased in the past years.

⬆️FY 2023: 483,927 registrations, selected 127,600

⬆️FY 2022: 308,613 registrations, selected 131,790

⬆️FY 2021: 274,237 registrations, selected 124,415

USCIS has not yet announced the number of H-1B registrations for FY 2024 that were submitted this year. According to experts, the number of registrations could reach 500,000 this fiscal year.

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