US: How Will The Beneficiary-Centric H-1B Visa Selection Work?

The changes in the immigration rules, and strict policies launched by USCIS after Trump took charge as the US president triggered panic and chaos among international students and work visa holders. The final rule launched last year will also be active this year, the Beneficiary-centric selection of H-1B visas. How does it work?

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the initial registration period for the fiscal year 2026 H-1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 7 and run through noon Eastern on March 24, 2025.

USCIS will again use the beneficiary-centric selection process originally launched in FY 2025. Under the beneficiary-centric process, registrations are selected by unique beneficiary rather than by registration. ‘If we receive registrations for enough unique beneficiaries by March 24, we will randomly select unique beneficiaries and send selection notifications via users’, USCIS says. USCIS intends to start releasing lottery results by March 31, 2025.

The lottery system earlier used to pick based on registration ID and that led to visa fraud with the majority of aspirants flooding with multiple registrations. For instance, a person files ten H-1B registrations making the probability of getting picked big, but with the new system, it will still be counted as one entry.

Prospective cap-subject H-1B petitioners and their representatives must use a USCIS organizational account online to register beneficiaries and pay the required fees. USCIS’s new H-1B registration fee of $215 per registration will be in effect for this year’s H-1B cap season.