How do H-1B visas work? Here’s everything you need to know

Thanks to high demands and systemic flaws, workers looking for an H-1B visa face an uphill battle. The current political and social turmoil surrounding all things immigration hasn’t helped. 

These visas are some of the most common temporary worker visas in the United States. They mostly operate via a lottery system for private companies and some nonprofits. Through that randomized setup, the government grants 65,000 visas annually, plus 20,000 specifically for people holding a master’s or higher degree. That’s only a fraction of the 479,953 registrations submitted for FY 2025. 

Mathilde Øllgaard-Ussing, who works for a social media startup in New York, didn’t get selected for this round for FY 2026 announced on March 31. She’ll try again the next time a lottery takes place — likely this summer, depending on how many lottery winners follow through and file with the government. 

But she’s covered for now through a fellowship that helps foreign workers access an H-1B visa outside the lottery system. The Build Fellowship, a program from the nonprofit Open Avenues, partners with employers and universities to enable immigrants to teach in their area of expertise five hours a week while they work an outside job. 

Working for a “cap-exempt” employer, like a nonprofit research organization, allows this to happen. Øllgaard-Ussing, a Danish passport holder, maintains her H-1B visa by teaching college students while serving as Koodos Labs’ growth and marketing head. 

“The opportunity for me to be able to pass on my knowledge to people that are interested in hearing about it was a gift,” Øllgaard-Ussing told Technical.ly. “It was such a win-win-win in the ability of being able to come over here, do my job and then also be able to service other people.”

This is all legal, stressed Danielle Goldman, the cofounder and executive director of Open Avenues. She started the organization with her father, an immigration lawyer who repeatedly saw clients passed over in the H-1B lottery. 

Even in this political climate, Goldman thinks the Build Fellowship offers a model that fits into the Trump administration’s alleged interest in strengthening the country’s workforce. 

“While we are building this solution and, really, an innovative model for immigration — pushing bounds, perhaps,” Goldman told Technical.ly, “everything that we have built here, what I’m so excited about, is it’s very America-first.”

“Everything is about restrictions and barriers,” she added, “and we’re here with something that we really believe, right now, is going to open pathways and create something that the Trump administration should truly get behind.” 

Departure from the lottery system  

Goldman explained that cap-exempt entities, or organizations not limited by the lottery system, include universities, nonprofits affiliated with universities, and both nonprofit and government-funded research organizations. The qualifications and requirements are the same as other H-1B visas. 

Private companies make up most of the lottery’s bids. Employers register for it and pay a fee ($215 as of FY 2026), per Alex Castrodale, head of the law firm Fragomen’s Pittsburgh office. It’s capped at 65,000 people, not including 20,000 slots for those with master’s degrees or higher.

That selection typically occurs once a year, with those for FY 2026 announced at the end of March. 

When an employee gets a lottery spot, the employer has 90 days to file a petition — the actual application for the visa. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) often picks more than what’s allotted in anticipation that applications won’t be submitted or approved in the end. A second lottery may be necessary to fill the quota, per Castrodale. 

The lottery route requires employers to file a presentation about the company and the job, the individual’s suitability for the company and how their education fits. 

H-1B visas also involve many government fees outside of legal assistance. While exact costs depend on factors like company size and how many workers are US citizens, employers usually pay $3,000 to 5,000 to sponsor someone, said Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute.  

The Build Fellowship costs employers $4,000 per month. That sum includes payroll and tax support, USCIS filing and premium processing fees, H-4 dependent filings for spouses, and legal costs for visa petitioning, per the website. 

The program takes and processes applications on a rolling basis and can start the program at any time of year, per Goldman.  

For the Build Fellowship, Øllgaard-Ussing had to assemble a pitch on what she wanted to teach: growth and marketing for startups. Lawyers with the Build Fellowship submitted her papers to the government, she said. 

Possible changes — and cautions — under Trump

Although the president enforced restrictions on H-1B visas in his first term, a more concrete stance remains unclear this time around. Some of his coalition support skilled worker pathways like H-1Bs — once held by Elon Musk. Leaders in his far-right base meanwhile argue that these programs take jobs away from US workers, even though they’ve filled employment gaps. 

This divide hasn’t stopped immigration officials from deporting visa holders since Trump took office, including a Brown University professor working under H-1B status. Several others with work- or academics-related visas, including international college students and green card holders, have been detained by federal authorities while courts weigh their expulsion.  

While these fragmented actions and policies take shape, Fragomen’s Castrodale advised people with a visa that’s pending or on the verge of expiration to avoid international travel. 

“As the US immigration landscape continues to shift, we are continuing to monitor and advise on any new regulations or travel restrictions,” he said. “Given the fluidity of these changes, we strongly advise all visa holders, including U.S. permanent residents (green card holders), to carefully assess their travel plans and ensure they have valid documentation.”

Another change could involve increasing the amount of money employers must pay workers. Open Avenues’ Goldman, who believes that should happen, warns against its implementation through a system that would harm startups. 

During his last presidency, Trump pitched a “merit-based” lottery system prioritizing those with the most advanced degrees and highest salaries. That would leave early-stage companies out and further benefit large tech companies, Goldman explained, because the average startup can’t pay the same wages as a big company like Google or Meta. 

These multinational giants already play an outsized role in H-1Bs: Google, Meta and Apple were among the top 10 beneficiaries of H-1B visas in FY 2024. Amazon topped the list.  

But with all of this in mind, she reiterated the Build Fellowship’s potential to fit the administration’s agenda. 

“Everything is about restrictions and barriers, and we’re here with something that we really believe right now is going to open pathways and create something that the Trump administration should truly get behind,” Goldman said. 

Bill Keyes, program director for the international student support organization International House Philadelphia, agrees that this strong business interest should motivate the Trump administration to maintain the H-1B program and other visas. Keyes helps students on F-1 visas get hired through the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, and created an employer toolkit to help people navigate the system.

Despite the uncertainty, he’s hopeful that the admin won’t disrupt H-1Bs too much. 

“It’s really hard to say if there was some spat between Trump and Elon Musk, who knows,” Keyes told Technical.ly. “That might change things a little bit, but right now, I’m optimistic about H-1B staying. … It’s the only mechanism we have to attract and retain high-skill talent that we desperately, desperately need.”

Flaws in the system and possible solutions 

Companies are also taking advantage of the existing setup by flooding the lottery, per the Economic Policy Institute’s Costa. 

Outsourcing staffing firms nabbed more than 11,600 visas in the 2023 H-1B lottery, a 2024 Bloomberg investigation revealed. Costa said that these agencies, including Infosys and Cognizant — the companies with the second- and third-highest numbers, respectively, of employees with H-1B visas in FY 2024 — hire workers through the lottery to do back-office IT work for other companies. 

He explained that in some cases, when visa holders are hired through a staffing firm and become proficient in the job, the employer rotates them back to their home countries. 

“The big argument for the H-1B program has been … if we don’t bring in H-1B workers to do these jobs here, the jobs are going to move offshore,” Costa told Technical.ly. “But the irony is that they were being actually used so that people could learn the job and then send the jobs offshore after learning how to do them.”

These workers hired through a third-party staffing firm often receive the lowest possible wages, he said. H-1B visa holders are paid a “prevailing wage,” which the Department of Labor describes as the “average wage paid to similarly employed workers in a specific occupation in the area of intended employment.” 

Costa found in his research that this system often leaves employees underpaid.  

If an employee wants to work elsewhere, it is relatively easy to transfer employers, as long as the visa holder’s employer takes the necessary actions, per Costa. 

But layoffs are a common issue. According to Costa, a laid-off H-1B visa holder has only 60 days to find another employer to file paperwork and pay fees. The frequent mass layoffs across tech companies make this even more difficult for those industry’s workers. 

“They end up in a really precarious situation where they, for the most part, probably have to go home,” he said. 

But there are solutions to these issues, Costa said. The bipartisan H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act was first introduced in Congress in 2007 and brought forward in several sessions since by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). It calls for increasing wage requirements, mandating H-1B employers post openings on a searchable website for US workers and laid-off H-1B employees, and prioritizing issuing visas to higher-skilled workers in STEM fields.  

Keyes from International House Philadelphia also wants a larger lottery so the US can retain more talent. The amount of slots hasn’t changed since 2004. 

It doesn’t help that it’s completely random, besides the separate round for applicants with master’s degrees or higher.

“If there’s one reasonable policy recommendation you can make,” Keyes said, “it would be to make a much larger lottery so that we don’t end up shedding all of this talent that we train just through this crazy lottery.”

This story, and all of Technical.ly's immigration reporting, is made possible by the WES Mariam Assefa Fund.

The WES Mariam Assefa Fund supports catalytic efforts to create more inclusive economies for immigrants and refugees in the US and Canada. It works closely with organizations and leaders focused on ensuring more equitable access to opportunity and wealth.