The H1B visa allows American companies to hire foreign workers in specialized occupations. This program is administered by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The visa is valid for three years which can be extended further for another three years.
Despite tightening the immigration rules, the dates for legal immigration routes via the H1B process have been announced. This high-skilled visa registration will start from 10:30 PM IST time on March 7 and will be open till 10:30 PM IST on March 24.
The significant changes in the category are:
- Representatives/Registrants have to use the full digital system for the first time
- Beneficiary centric process will be used for FY H1B 2026. Under this scheme, registrations are selected by a unique beneficiary rather than by registration.
Petitioners will use their USCIS account to add beneficiaries for the selection process. They have to pay a fee of $215 to submit their beneficiaries. If USCIS receives enough unique beneficiary registrations, then beneficiaries will be randomly selected. The selection notifications will be sent through USCIS online account. If it does not receive enough registrations, then all the properly submitted unique beneficiaries will be selected. The selection notifications will be sent on March 31st.
The Department of Treasury has approved to temporarily increase the credit card transaction limit from $24,999.99 to $99,999.99 per day for the FY 2026 H-1B cap season. This temporary increase has been introduced in account of the previous transaction limit exceed issue. However, transactions more than $99,999.99 will be collected using Automated Clearing House(ACH). In such circumstances, payers have to inform their bank in advance to avoid any ACH block on their account.
An H-1B cap-subject petition, including a petition for a beneficiary who is eligible for the advanced degree exemption, may only be filed by a petitioner whose registration for the beneficiary named in the H-1B petition was selected in the H-1B registration process. Additional information on the electronic registration process is available on the H-1B Electronic Registration Process page.
Organizational Account Enhancements for FY 2026
For FY 2026, USCIS has made multiple enhancements for organizational and representative accounts for H-1B filing. These enhancements include:
- The ability for paralegals to work with more than one legal representative. A paralegal will now be able to accept invitations from multiple legal representative accounts, allowing them to prepare H-1B registrations, Form I-129 H-1B petitions, and Form I-907 requests for premium processing for different attorneys, all within one paralegal account;
- An easier way for legal representatives to add paralegals to company clients.
- Pre-population of certain Form I-129 fields from selected H-1B registrations; and
- The ability to prepare a spreadsheet of H-1B beneficiary data and upload the information to pre-populate data in H-1B registrations.
These enhancements will be live before the start of the initial registration period.
