On February 22, the American Immigration Lawyers Association published an article summarizing the anticipated “beneficiary-centric” changes being made to the H-1B registration process for the 2025 fiscal year.

Instead of selecting by employer registration, USCIS will now select registrations by beneficiary. All beneficiaries must have a valid passport or travel documentation, the number of that document will be used in the selection process. Each beneficiary who has a registration submitted on their behalf will be entered into the lottery once, regardless of how many employer registrations are submitted for them. If a beneficiary is selected from the lottery, each employer that submitted a registration for them will be eligible to file a petition on their behalf during the H-1B petition filing period beginning April 1st.

The benefits of this new system include disincentivizing taking advantage of the system with multiple registrations solely to improve the chance of being selected; an individual with only one registration will have the same chance of being selected as someone with multiple registrations. Another favorable effect of the new system is negotiation leverage for beneficiaries more comparable to their U.S. worker counterparts; since all employers submitting registrations for an individual are able to file H-1B petitions on their behalf, these individuals have more power to negotiate the salaries and benefits of their job offers.

Employer concern centers on investing time, money, an energy into a candidate who may choose to work for another employer who also submitted a registration on their behalf, as a result AILA has recommended that USCIS provide all employers filing registrations with a notice if their prospective H-1B worker has had multiple registrations submitted for them. AILA also reminds employers to take note of USCIS’ increased authority to deny or revoke cap subject H-1B petitions due to registrations containing false information, and to consider their obligations to amend or withdraw petitions when a beneficiary has more than one approved H-1B petition.

The changes to these H-1B regulations are effective March 4, according to the USCIS final rule issued at the beginning of February.

For More Information:

The original article can be found here.

The AILA Business Section Call regarding this topic can be found here.

This blog post does not serve as legal advice and does not establish any client-attorney privilege. Do not take any action based on the information contained in this post without consulting a qualified immigration attorney. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our legal team directly.

Categories: H-1B, Immigration News