On Friday, August 14, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
(USCIS) announced the results of a second H-1B cap lottery. The
agency selected an additional number of H-1B registrations from the
original submissions which occurred during the registration period
from March 1 to March 20, 2020.
As
previously reported by Mintz, USCIS held open the possibility
of subsequent H-1B selection periods for registrations submitted in
March, if an insufficient number of H-1B petitions were filed to
USCIS based on the initial lottery selections.
USCIS has determined that there were fewer filed H-1B petitions
as compared to selected H-1B registrations. As a result, USCIS
selected additional registrations in order to ensure that enough
petitions are approved to fill the annual quota of 85,000. USCIS
has not announced how many registrations have been selected in this
second lottery. Based on the number of initial registration
filings, approximately 185,000 registrations were not