H-1B Visa Cap Results: 65% Rejected, Immigration Fees Prompt Decline

Forbes

15-05-2025

H-1B cap registrations declined this year, but U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services still rejected almost two-thirds of applications due to the low annual H-1B limit. Higher immigration fees and other factors contributed to the drop in registrations for FY 2026. An H-1B visa is often the only practical way a high-skilled foreign national, including an international student, can work long term in the United States. The H-1B visa category remains the most restrictive in the U.S. immigration system.
USCIS released H-1B cap results for FY 2026 that showed a decline in registrations. The immigration service makes selections by lottery in any year the agency receives more H-1B electronic registrations than permitted by the annual limit. The H-1B annual limit is 65,000 plus a 20,000 exemption for individuals with an advanced degree from a U.S. university. For the past two decades, employers have exhausted the quota every year.
For FY 2026, USCIS received 343,981 eligible registrations, a decline of 27% from 470,342 for FY 2025. Higher immigration fees likely contributed to the drop in H-1B registrations. A Biden administration fee rule raised the cost of filing an H-1B registration for FY 2026 from $10 to $215.
'With the higher fee this year, employers had to make a more informed economic decision about how many employees to enter into the lottery,' said Kevin Miner of Fragomen. 'That being said, we continued to see very high demand, and regardless of the decrease in registrations, many people who need H-1B status still were not selected.'
The number of unique employers increased, going from approximately 52,700 for FY 2025 to 57,600 for FY 2026, a rise of 9%. However, H-1B registrations filed per employer declined. For FY 2026, employers filed an average of 6.0 eligible registrations, a decline of 33% from 8.9 eligible registrations per employer for FY 2025, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis.
A second round of selections may be less likely to occur in 2025. 'I think it is less likely this year that there will be another pull of names from the lottery like they have done in prior years,' said Miner. 'Because employers had to make a larger investment into the lottery entries, it is likely that most individuals who were selected in the lottery will end up with an H-1B filed for them, so the chances of another pull of names from the lottery are probably lower this year.'
'The increased registration cost is a driver, but it can't be viewed in isolation,' said Lynden Melmed of BAL. 'The overall process for hiring and retaining foreign workers is getting more expensive and difficult.' He notes that companies that filed in FY 2026 had a better chance of getting a registration selected because of fewer filings.
Vic Goel of Goel & Anderson agrees that higher fees are only one factor in the decline in H-1B registrations. 'In my experience, the most substantial factor behind the drop was the combination of USCIS reforms aimed at curbing multiple registrations for the same beneficiary and growing employer uncertainty tied to the political climate,' he said. 'The beneficiary-centric selection model did a good job limiting duplicative filings, creating a more compliant pool—but also a smaller one.' USCIS implemented a beneficiary-centric model starting with the FY 2025 selection process to limit multiple filings for the same individual.
Despite the lower number of H-1B registrations, nearly two-thirds were rejected due to the annual limit of 85,000. USCIS selected 120,141 registrations out of 343,981, or 35%. That means the agency rejected 65% of registrations because of the numerical limit. USCIS selects more than 85,000 registrations to account for denials and withdrawn or abandoned applications.
Only 85,000 new H-1B visa holders will begin work in FY 2026 for cases that count against the annual limit. That means only 25% of the 343,981 eligible registrations will result in new H-1B workers for companies in FY 2026, up from 20% in FY 2025. Still, according to an NFAP analysis, the H-1B visa category remains the most restrictive. In FY 2024, the State Department approved 89% of J-1 visas for exchange visitors and 96% of H-2A visas for agricultural workers.
A European teenager is three times more likely to get a visa to work at a summer amusement park than a graduate student is to receive H-1B status to work for a U.S. company on artificial intelligence. In recent months, the State Department has revoked or threatened to revoke thousands of visas for international students.
'There are still a lot of individuals who have been entered into the lottery multiple times that have not been selected, so employers need to continue to look at their foreign national population, including recent hires who might have two or three years of Optional Practical Training still available to them, and get lottery entries in next March to maximize the chances of being selected,' said Kevin Miner.
Research by economist Britta Glennon concluded that immigration laws restricting H-1B visas result not in more employment for U.S. workers but more jobs leaving the United States. According to attorney Vic Goel, 'The overall shortage of H-1B visas continues to pressure employers to explore alternatives, whether through other visa categories or offshoring.'