The use of the term “lottery” is very deceptive in the context of a discussion about the H-1B professional and specialty occupation work visa. We often receive inquiries from potential H-1B beneficiaries who contact our offices asking us: “Where should I buy my H-1B Visa 2015 lottery ticket?” or “I want to get myself into the 2015 H-1B Visa lottery – How do I do that?” Reference to the “H-1B Lottery” is really a bit of a misnomer . . .
To shed some light here, the H-1B visa petition process is nothing like buying a lottery ticket. In fact, the preparation of the H-1B visa is just like the preparation of any other nonimmigrant work visa petition. The difference is that there is a specific “cap” or “limitation” on the number of H-1B nonimmigrant visas that are made available by the government each fiscal year. If the number of H-1B petitions that are submitted exceeds the limitations then the H-1B petitions that are submitted are aggregated and submitted for adjudication using a process called “random selection”.
The process of the H-1Bs being aggregated and then submitted to “random selection” was officially referred to by the USCOS as the H-1B “Random Selection” process. However, in several press releases and numerous articles about H-1B visas, this process was referred to as a “Lottery” or “Visa Lottery”. These words have come to be recognized as “terms-of-the-art” over time. With this understanding about what the “Lottery” terminology really means, we can now discuss how the Lottery process really works. This information is quite helpful to H-1B Employer and Employee hopefuls so that they can understand the true probability of H-1B success assuming that a very significant number of H-1B visas are submitted on March 31st 2014 for the April 1st 2014 H-1B visa filing deadline.
When the economy was strong, in 2008, there was an H-1B visa lottery for the fiscal year 2009 H-1B visa quota. On or about April 1st 2008, the USCIS received approximately 163,000 H-1B nonimmigrant professional and specialty occupation petitions for a cap-subject number of about 85,000 (the 65,000 regular U.S. Bachelor’s equivalency H-1B quota and the 20,000 U.S. Masters Degree quota).
The USCIS monitored the intake of the H-1B petitions and proceeded to separate the petitions into two (2) lots. One lot was for H-1Bs with a U.S. Master’s Degree. The second lot was for H-1Bs with the U.S. equivalency of a Bachelor’s Degree. Each petition was tagged with a special identifying number. The USCIS then ran a random algorithm on the submissions. First, a random selection process was conducted for the U.S. Masters Degree quota petitions. Those petitions chosen were placed into the processing cue. If the case was being premium processed, a receipt notice was issued within a week or two. If the case was not being premium processed, it could take many weeks and sometimes months before the employer would get a receipt.
If the U.S. Master’s petitions were not selected for the U.S. Masters Degree quota then they were “spilled-over” into the general quota pool. After the U.S. equivalency of the H-1B general pool was created, another random algorithm was run on that pool of H-1B visas in order to determine which H-1B visas would be designated under the general quota cap. Those petitions that were chosen in the random selection/lottery for the U.S. Bachelor equivalency H-1B pool were placed into the processing cue. As with the U.S. Master’s Degree pool, if the case was being premium processed, a receipt notice was issued within a week or two. If the case was not being premium processed, it could take many weeks and sometimes months before the employer would get a receipt. According to the USCIS, all of the selected petitions were cued for processing (and I suppose that we just have to take their word for it).
Assuming that “history repeats itself”, the following is the way that the visa lottery for the 2014-2015 H-1B visas will wo