USCIS announces H-1B registration account creation

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced that petitioners filing an H-1B cap-subject petition could now create a USCIS online account. The type of account would depend on the role of the person submitting the application. This is in line with the decision to move to a new electronic registration process for H-1B visas for fiscal year 2021. Representatives will use the same type of representative account that is already available and may use an existing account. Prospective petitioners submitting their own registrations (U.S. employers and U.S. agents, collectively known as “registrants”) will use a new “registrant” account that will be available beginning Feb. 24.

Representatives may add clients to their accounts at any time, but both representatives and registrants must wait until March 1 at noon Eastern to enter beneficiary information, submit registrations and pay the $10 non-refundable registration fee for each beneficiary, said the USCIS in a statement.

The initial registration period will run from noon Eastern time March 1 through noon Eastern March 20, 2020. Account creation and registration will remain available throughout this period and selections will take place only after the initial registration period closes. Hence, there is no need to register on March 1. If USCIS receives enough registrations by March 20, it will randomly select registrations and send the notification through the USCIS online account by March 31, 2020.

USCIS had announced in December 2019 that it had successfully finished testing a pilot registration system and that it would implementing the electronic registration process for fiscal 2021 for H-1B visa petitions.

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