On July 30, the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) held a re-draw lottery for H-1B applicants for fiscal year 2025. Earlier this year, USCIS held its first lottery for fiscal year 2025, but this time it held an additional lottery.

USCIS announced that it conducted an additional lottery on August 5 and notified the employers of successful applicants. Successful applicants were instructed to submit their applications through their USCIS online accounts. The second lottery was conducted only for applicants who were not successful in the previous lottery.

USCIS did not hold a second lottery for the master's degree cap because it had already drawn enough entries to fill the 20,000 cap for FY 2025. A second lottery was held for the regular H-1B cap to fill the 65,000 cap. This second lottery included both master's degree and regular cap entries.

The H-1B visa allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign nationals in occupations that require the theoretical and practical application of specialized knowledge normally acquired through a bachelor's degree or higher, or its equivalent, in a particular specialty. Occupations that qualify for H-1B include fields such as accounting, analytics, architecture, education, engineering, information technology and mathematics.

H-1B visas are generally in high demand, with an annual cap of 65,000 visas, but an additional 20,000 available for foreigners who have earned a master's degree or higher in the U.S. In 2020, the USCIS introduced an electronic registration process for H-1B petitions.

For fiscal year 2025, USCIS announced that it received approximately 442,000 applications during the application period, and selected 114,017 applications to meet the 85,000 limit. USCIS usually selects more applicants than the annual limit to take into account cases in which the H-1B petition is not submitted or is not ultimately approved after selection.