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USCIS will weight H-1B lottery by salary starting Feb 2026

10 points| codebyaditya | 1 month ago |theh1brecords.substack.com

8 comments

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codebyaditya|1 month ago

Author here.

Quick summary of probability shifts under the weighted system:

  Level I ($80K median):  -57% selection probability
  Level II ($103K median): -14%
  Level III ($135K median): +29%
  Level IV ($158K median): +73%
The counterintuitive finding: product companies (direct employers) have 22% Level I concentration vs 7% for staffing firms. The rule designed to stop "lottery abuse" hits direct employers 3x harder.

Data source: DOL LCA disclosure data. Happy to discuss methodology.

square_usual|1 month ago

> The rule designed to stop "lottery abuse" hits direct employers 3x harder.

To prove this, you need to compute the total numbers and not just proportion. If 22% of the direct employees are Level 1, but there's only 300 direct level 1 filings total, the absolute numbers are dwarfed by the drop in probability of the staffing firms.