USCIS H-1B Visa Registration Opens March 7 with $215 Fee

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has officially announced the registration period for the fiscal year (FY) 2026 H-1B visa cap, commencing at noon Eastern on March 7, 2025, and concluding at noon Eastern on March 24, 2025.

This window is crucial for employers and their legal representatives, who will register each potential beneficiary electronically via a USCIS online account. Each registration will incur a non-refundable fee of $215. USCIS has adopted a completely electronic system to modernize the H-1B visa registration process. This change mandates that employers create an organizational account if they are new to the system, while those already registered from FY 2021-2024 will find their accounts automatically updated upon their next login.

Legal representatives will need to add clients to their accounts but cannot initiate the registration process until March 7. The selection process following the registration period will be beneficiary-centric. If the total number of registrations exceeds the cap, USCIS will randomly select unique beneficiaries and notify them via their online accounts.

Should the number of applications not meet the cap, all qualified registrations will proceed to processing. Winners of the selection lottery can expect notifications by March 31, 2025. To accommodate the anticipated surge in transaction volumes during the registration period, the US Department of Treasury has raised the daily credit card transaction limit from $24,999.99 to $99,999.99.

Transactions that exceed this limit will need to be processed through the Automated Clearing House (ACH) and require prior bank authorization. USCIS has also rolled out a series of enhancements aimed at streamlining the registration process. These improvements allow paralegals to collaborate with multiple legal representatives within the USCIS system, thus simplifying client management.

Additionally, certain fields on Form I-129 can now be auto-filled using information from H-1B registrations, and employers can upload spreadsheets containing beneficiary details facilitating data entry.
Following the selection confirmation, employers are required to file H-1B cap-subject petitions using Form I-129. For detailed guidelines on the registration process, USCIS has made comprehensive resources available on its H-1B Electronic Registration Process page.