hey all i am Apurva and welcome back to Wedesified i hope you all watched our video about the h-1b
visa and its eligibility in this video we will talk about how the h1b lottery is picked and
the entire procedure starting from filing the petition till the approval and stamping
so if you are interested to apply for h1b visa this year or in the near future
then you should definitely watch this video to understand it in detail but before that if you
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so in the last video we told you that us gives 85 000 h1b visas every year but are they sufficient
about half a million new international students come to us every year some of these students go
back to their home country after their studies but majority of them want to work on their h-1b
visas here in the u.s in addition to these a lot of working people want to come to us on h1b visa
so you see there is so much demand for these visas for the 85 000 available visas
uscis received 274 000 applications in 2020 and 308 000 applications in 2021 so you can imagine
how tough it is to get this visa but because there are a lot of people applying for h1b visa but very
limited number of visas available uscis introduced lottery system to randomly select the lucky people
so let's see how this lottery process works earlier companies had to send all the documents
and pay close to five thousand dollars for each employee they are applying for before the lottery
itself and if the candidate is selected in this lottery then uscis will do the further processing
if the candidate is not selected in the lottery then uscis had to send all the documents and
checks back this involved so much manpower and money for this back and forth postals
so to simplify this process starting 2020 uscis introduced electronic registration process
using this the companies just have to pay a 10 fee per applicant and provide some
basic information to put an entry into the lottery once the registration period is over
uscis conducts a computer-based lottery and announces the lottery results by 31st march
the employers can see the status of the registrations in their online uscis accounts
the registration status shows as selected for the candidates that are selected in the lottery
it shows as not selected for the candidates that are not eligible for the h1b cap based
on their details provided and it shows as denied for those candidates that submitted
duplicate or multiple registrations from the same employer you can submit multiple registrations
from multiple employers but you cannot submit multiple registrations from the same employer
earlier before the electronic registration was implemented some consulting companies used to
submit multiple entries for the same candidate to increase their chance of lottery selection this is
very unfair for other candidates in the lottery and hence uscis is taking strict action against
those who try to violate the rules now if any company files multiple registrations for a single
candidate because it's only ten dollar filing fee then uscis will deny all the registrations from
the company hope this teaches a lesson to the people who try to take advantage of the system
now for you if the status shows as submitted even after their initial round of lottery that means
that you still have hope because uscis conducted multiple lotteries per year in the last couple of
years in the lottery first they will pick 65 000 petitions from the general pool that includes all
the applications after that they gathered all the unselected petitions with us masters or phd
degrees and pick 20 000 more petitions from this pool so if you have a masters or phd degree from
the us then your chance of getting selected in the lottery is significantly higher than other people
because first you will get a chance in the general pool and if you are not selected in that then you
will get one more chance with advanced degree quota once the results are announced by march
31st employers have to submit all the required documents and payments for the selected candidates
for further processing within 90 days then after the review of these documents uscis either
approves denies or requests for further evidence which is also called as rfe on the petition
the common reasons to get rfer whether your job qualifies as specialty occupation or not if your
degree or experience is relevant to the job or not or if there are any other documents missing in
your petition when rfe is issued you have to reply with necessary information within the given time
there is no need to panic if you get a rfe because many times the petitions get approved after you
reply with supporting documents but sometimes they can issue a second rfe or deny the petition
before the biden's government the denial rates were alarming at 21 in 2019 and 24 in 2018
but in 2021 it was just four percent so things are getting better but if your h1b petition is
denied for any other reasons then you have to wait until the next year apart from these rejections
some people may just not file their petitions after getting picked in the lottery could
be because they filed multiple petitions with multiple employers and got lucky multiple times
or due to any unfortunate reasons like if they lost their job after they entered in the lottery
in these cases the 85 000 quota won't be filled uscis usually takes this into consideration and
picks a few more petitions in the initial lottery itself but if the quota isn't still full they may
conduct multiple rounds of lottery so as long as your status shows as submitted you may still
have hope let's talk about the documents that are required for h1b filing like we said earlier h1b
is an employer-sponsored visa so you don't have to submit anything directly to uscis you will send
the documents to your employer and your employer or their attorney will do the registration
and file the petition with uscis these are the documents that you need to send to your employer
if you are a student then it is important to save all the i20s like the i20 with admission
with cpt opt or stem opt etc if you are working then you need to save all the w2s offer letters
from the past employers and recent pay stubs you should also have a passport with at least
6 months validity if your passport is expiring soon and you are in the us then watch this video
to know how to renew your passport from us itself let's assume you got your petition approved great
so you can start working immediately right no irrespective of your approval date the
h1b visa period starts from 1st october of that year unless your approval decision comes
later than october 1st in that case your start date will be written on your notice
uscis usually takes around two and a half to three months for the decision so by july or august you
will get to know but if in case it's taking more time and you want to expedite that process
then you can pay around two thousand five hundred dollars extra and do the premium processing
with premium processing uscis usually gives the decision within two weeks after your petition is
approved if you are a working professional outside us then you need to get your h1b stamping done
before you can enter us we will make another video about the h1b stamping process as well if you are
on opt or stem opt then you can continue to work with the change of status even without getting
the stamping and h1b stamping is needed only if or when you go out of the country and come back to us
if you're not leaving the us then you can continue to work until your h1b is expired
so that's all we have for today we will talk about the h1b visa process in 2022
and what all you need to do if you're applying for h1b visa this year in the next video
there are many updates in terms of the h1b lottery salaries and stamping process
especially for this year so you should definitely stay tuned and watch our next video
hope you learned something new today if you find this video useful then please like and share it
and if you have any questions then ask us in the comment section below we will reply and
make more videos to answer all your questions see you in the next video until then keep learning bye