U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) formally announced the implementation of the H-1B registration process for Fiscal Year 2021 H-1B cap-subject petitions today.

The initial registration period will be open from March 1 through March 20, 2020, for the FY 2021 H-1B numerical allocations.

• During this initial registration period, prospective petitioners or their authorized representatives, must electronically submit a separate registration naming each foreign worker for whom they seek to file an H-1B cap subject petition and pay the associated $10 H-1B registration fee for each submission.
• If a sufficient number of registrations are received, USCIS will randomly select the number of registrations projected as needed to reach the FY 2021 H-1B numerical allocations after the initial registration period closes and notify registrants with selected registrations no later than March 31, 2020.
• Prospective petitioners with selected registrations will be eligible to file a FY 2021 cap-subject petition only for the foreign worker named in the registration and within the filing period indicated on the eligibility notice.

If you are currently looking to hire qualified professionals who are not U.S. workers, now is the time to act. Employers who are not certain which of their employees may require a new H-1B visa should seek guidance from counsel to meet the approaching H-1B cap filing season. Besides new hires, likely candidates in your current workforce are recent graduates working pursuant to their Optional Practical Training (“OPT”), L-1B employees, J-1 Trainees or others.

If you have any questions about this Client Alert, please contact Laleh Sharifi at lsharifi@sgrlaw.com.