The second round of random lottery selection for the coveted H-1B work visa has been completed in the US this year, enabling US businesses to hire foreign workers in specialist vocations requiring technological skills. Accordingly, the chosen candidates have been informed. It is essential to the hiring of tens of thousands of workers each year from nations like China and India by technology companies. "We now have randomly selected, from the remaining FY 2024 registrations properly submitted, a sufficient number of registrations projected as needed to reach the cap," US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said on Tuesday. All the successful applicants eligible for the H-1B visas for the fiscal year beginning October 1, have been notified about it, it said, several media reports cited.

Why USCIS conducted the second round of H1B lottery?

The second round of the H-1B lottery was conducted as in the first round in April a large number of unqualified applications got selected. "The large number of eligible registrations for beneficiaries with multiple eligible registrations - much larger than in previous years - has raised serious concerns that some may have tried to gain an unfair advantage by working together to submit multiple registrations on behalf of the same beneficiary," USCIS said. "This may have unfairly increased their chances of selection. We remain committed to deterring and preventing abuse of the registration process, and to ensuring only those who follow the law are eligible to file an H-1B cap petition," it said. The federal agency said the H-1B electronic registration process, implemented in 2020 beginning with the fiscal 2021 H-1B cap, has dramatically streamlined processing by reducing paperwork and data exchange and provides overall cost savings to petitioning employers. The H-1B programme is an essential part of our nation's immigration system and our economy, and USCIS is committed to implementing the law and helping meet the ever-changing needs of the US labour market, it said. "We are working on an upcoming H-1B modernisation rule that will propose, among other improvements, bolstering the H-1B registration process to reduce the possibility of misuse and fraud in the H-1B registration system," it said.