Lawsuit Seeks Transparency in H-1B Lottery Process

Published on American Immigration Council (http://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org)

Lawsuit Seeks Transparency in H-1B Lottery Process

Released on Mon, May 23, 2016

Washington D.C. - The American Immigration Council (Council) and the American Immigration
Lawyers Association (AILA) have teamed up on a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) seeking information about the
governments administration of the H-1B lottery. The lawsuit, filed last Friday, was brought under the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd. is co-counsel with
attorneys from the Council.
Every year, U.S. employers seeking highly skilled foreign professionals submit petitions to USCIS on
the first business day of April for the limited pool of H-1B nonimmigrant visa numbers that are
available for the coming fiscal year. With an annual limit of 65,000 visas for new hiresand 20,000
additional visas for professionals with a masters or doctoral degree from a U.S. universityemployer
demand for H-1B visas has exceeded the statutory cap for more than ten years.
If USCIS determines at any time during the first five business days of the filing period that it has
received more than enough petitions to meet the numerical limits, the agency uses a
computer-generated random selection process (or lottery) to select a sufficient number of H-1B
petitions to satisfy the limits, taking into account a percentage of the petitions selected which will be
denied, withdrawn, or otherwise rejected. Petitions not selected are returned to the petitioning
employers. U.S. employers, foreign nationals seeking H-1Bs, and immigration lawyers are keenly
interested in how USCIS administers the lottery process.
USCIS has never been forthcoming in describing the selection process. When petitions are
submitted to USCIS in April, its as if they disappear into a black box, said Melissa Crow, Legal
Director of the American Immigration Council. This suit is intended to pry open that box and let the
American public and those most directly affected see how the lottery system works from start to
finish, and to learn whether the system is operating fairly and all the numbers are being used as the
law provides.
Despite the Obama Administrations public commitment to the values of transparency and
accountability, frankly, our attempts to see into this process have been resisted, said AILA
Executive Director Benjamin Johnson. He continued, Instead of responding to our requests for
information about how the lottery is conducted, how cap-subject petitions are processed, and how
the numbers are estimated and tracked, USCIS has kept the process entirely opaque. This litigation
is intended to shine a necessary light on an important process in Americas business immigration
system.
###
For more information contact,Wendy Feliz at wfeliz@immcouncil.org [1] or 202-507-7524 or Belle
Woods at bwoods@aila.org [2] or 202-507-7675

View Release [3]

Source URL:
http://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/newsroom/release/lawsuit-seeks-transparency-h-1b-lotte
ry-process
Copyright American Immigration Council All Rights Reserved | Contact Us

Page 1 of 2

Lawsuit Seeks Transparency in H-1B Lottery Process

Published on American Immigration Council (http://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org)
Links:
[1] mailto:wfeliz@immcouncil.org
[2] mailto:bwoods@aila.org
[3] http://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/

Copyright American Immigration Council All Rights Reserved | Contact Us

Page 2 of 2