H-1B Lottery

The H-1B lottery is the random selection process the U.S. government uses to allocate a limited number of H-1B work visas each year when the number of employer petitions submitted exceeds the annual statutory cap. Because demand for H-1B visas, which are commonly used to sponsor skilled foreign workers in specialty occupations, routinely exceeds the available supply, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services relies on a randomized lottery to determine which petitions will be selected for further processing. Employers seeking to sponsor a candidate through the H-1B program must first register the individual during a designated registration period, after which the government conducts the lottery drawing if registrations exceed the cap. Only those petitions selected in the lottery are then permitted to proceed with the full H-1B application process, meaning even a fully qualified candidate and a legitimate job offer are not guaranteed a visa if not selected. The unpredictability of the H-1B lottery has led many companies to explore alternative hiring strategies for accessing skilled international talent, such as building offshore teams in the candidate's home country through an Employer of Record, which sidesteps the uncertainty of the visa lottery entirely while still allowing the company to engage that talent.