Why is my H-1B Registration Still Showing Submitted?
If you are reading this blog post, you were likely notified that you were not selected in the H-1B random selection process for FY2027 which was held in March 2026. This is referred to as not winning the H-1B lottery. You may question why your selection continues to show that your H-1B registration is “Submitted” instead of “Not Selected”. You may worry that something went wrong with your submission. Yet the status “Not Selected” is only reflected when USCIS has finished all rounds of selection, which may not occur until the end of the current fiscal year (FY2026 ends 9/30/2026 and FY2027 begins 10/1/2026) or even beyond if there is a third round selection. The status of a registration that wasn’t “Selected” will remain as “Submitted” until at least July, which is the earliest that USCIS would announce an end to all selection processes. Allow me to explain!
As of this writing, USCIS does not appear to explain the process of moving a registration from “Submitted” to “Not Selected” on its main H-1B Cap Season websites, but in a 2020 Webinar (see page 30), USCIS noted the following:
After the initial selection process, registrations will be identified as having one of the three following statuses:
“Submitted,” “Selected,” and “Denied (Duplicated).”
“Submitted”
A registration status may continue to show “Submitted” after the initial selection process has been completed. "Submitted" registrations will remain in consideration for selection until the end of the fiscal year, at which point all registration statuses will be Selected, Not Selected, or Denied.
Selected: means that you have been selected to file an H‐1B cap‐subject petition. H‐1B cap‐subject petitioners, including those eligible for the advanced degree exemption, must have a “Selected” registration notification in order to be eligible to properly file an H‐1B cap‐subject petition for FY 2021. Petitioners with selected registrations will be eligible to file an H‐1B cap‐subject petition only for the beneficiaries named in the selected registrations, beginning April 1, 2020. Petitioners with selected registrations will need to file within the 90‐day period, as indicated on the selection notice. Selection does not guarantee H‐1B approval. You are still required to file a paper Form I‐129 with evidence that establishes eligibility and pay the required fee. Petitioners should print and submit a copy of their selection notifications with their petitions.
“Denied (Duplicated)”
Means that more than one registration was filed on the beneficiary’s behalf by the same registrant. All registrations filed by the registrant on behalf of this beneficiary are invalid. As a reminder, you can log into your account to review your registrations and delete duplicates, up until the point that the registration process closes on March 20. After this, remaining duplicate registrations will be considered invalid and the status will indicate “Denied.”
At the end of the fiscal year, any registrations that were not selected as part of any selection process will be updated to “Not Selected”. “Not Selected” means not selected for this fiscal year.
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What does all this mean?
So, at the time of this blog post (April 2, 2026), no registration in the current H-1B random selection would show “Not Selected”. That is because there could potentially be a second or third round selection. The only time the status of those not selected changes to “Not Selected” is when USCIS determines there will not be further selection rounds. So, last year (2025) for example, we received “Not Selected” status only in July 2025 when USCIS determined there wouldn’t be a second round, but in other previous years we’ve not received “Not Selected” status on any cases until February of the following year, after USCIS ran a second or even third round. Your status will remain “Submitted” because there is a chance it could be run in a second or subsequent round.
In our experience over many years of H-1B random selection processes, the status does not change after the USCIS runs the initial selection (regular, plus master’s cap), usually on the weekend. Now that we have USCIS’ March 31, 2026 confirmation that the selection process is concluded, there will be no further changes or updates until after the 3 month H-1B filing window for this round of selections is over, which is June 30. Registrations will show “Submitted” or “Selected” until then.
USCIS selects more than the 85,000 quota to be “Selected” to file an H-1B petition, because they know from past experience that there is a certain percentage of petitioners who will not proceed to file an H-1B petition even when selected (job falls through, employer decides against petitioning, employee takes another offer, employee is granted some other status), and that there will be a certain percentage of filed petitions that USCIS will ultimately deny. You can see historically the number of selections on the H-1B electronic registration process website. Last year, for example, the FY26 H-1B lottery (which was conducted in 2025) shows 120,141 selections, against the 85,000 cap. That means 35,141 “Selected” registrations (120,141 - 85,000 = 35,141) ended up with no H-1B approval whether through denial or the fact that no petition was filed on behalf of the beneficiary.
After the initial selection (H-1B Lottery First Round, or Round 1) USCIS re-evaluates how many petitions were filed for H-1B status in July, after the June 30 filing cut off, and in some years they re-run another selection based on the “Submitted” H-1B registrations from March, usually in late July or early August. This is called the “H-1B Lottery Second Round” selection. If someone is selected in the second round, they are invited to submit a petition in the 3 month window of September to November. If, for some reason, there are still numbers available (due to lack of enough filings or more than anticipated denials, there could even be a “third round” selection in December or January resulting in another 3 month window. This occurred in 2021, when on November 19, 2021, USCIS announced a “third round” for the FY22 H-1B lottery allowing more filings for third round selectees from November 22, 2021 to February 23, 2022. So, that year notices of “Not Selected” came very late indeed.
Last year there was no second round. Because this year’s random selection process was based on weighted selection with higher wage positions receiving more chances, and since there at present still a $100,000 fee imposed on consular approval cases, the previous projections USCIS would have looked to are probably not going to be very reliable, and USCIS may over select or under select in this round, whether there will be a second or third round is even more up in the air. If there is a second or third round, the chances of selection are very small because they are not selecting 120,000 to get to 85,000, but rather they might be selecting 5,000 to fill an extra 2,500 slots for example, and so the chance of second or third round selection is quite low. Still, our office has had people selected in second or third rounds in years that there have been subsequent rounds of selectio.
If your H-1B registration is still showing as “Submitted”, you may understandably question why the USCIS online status still shows “Submitted” instead of “Not Selected” now that initial selection results have been announced, but it is normal at this time. One might liken this to admission to a University where the college puts applicants on a “wait list” because they have not been selected for admission but if those who have been selected for admission don’t end up registering to attend, the college moves to the wait list to select more admissions. This is roughly how it works with the random selection.
