U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services today announced a requirement for employers seeking to file H-1B cap-subject petitions, including those eligible for the advanced degree exemption, to first electronically register and pay the associated $10 H-1B registration fee before filing a petition for the fiscal year 2021 H-1B cap.

USCIS will open an initial registration period from March 1 through March 20, 2020.

• During this initial registration period, prospective petitioners or their authorized representatives must electronically submit a separate registration naming each alien for whom they seek to file an H-1B cap-subject petition.
• If a sufficient number of registrations are received, we will randomly select the number of registrations projected as needed to reach the H-1B numerical allocations after the initial registration period closes and no later than March 31, 2020.
• Prospective petitioners with selected registrations will be eligible to file a cap-subject petition only for the alien named in the registration.

Once the H-1B registration system has been implemented, and when registration is required, the agency will not consider a cap-subject petition properly filed unless it is based on a valid registration selection for the same beneficiary, and the appropriate fiscal year. Additionally, although petitioners can register multiple aliens during a single online submission, duplicate registrations for the same beneficiary in the same fiscal year will be discarded.