Workers had another chance to land an H-1B visa if they weren’t selected in an initial lottery in March.

US Customs and Immigration Services announced Monday that it completed a second random-selection lottery for H-1B visas for the 2024 federal fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

“It’s a positive that this is happening,” Elissa Taub, a partner with law firm Siskind Susser, told SIA. “It means more people will get the jobs they want, and more employers will be able to hire the people they want.” Taub also noted that visa caps are in place for H-1B visas.

Taub said she has already heard about multiple candidates being chosen during the second lottery, and those workers could be on the job by the start of the federal fiscal year on Oct. 1.

H-1B visas allow US employers to hire highly skilled workers, such as IT and healthcare professionals, from outside the country; however, the visas are capped at 65,000 with an additional 20,000 available for workers who have a master’s degree or higher from a US university.

The USCIS said it needed to select additional registrations to reach the visa cap for the upcoming federal fiscal year.

Workers may have accepted multiple job offers from multiple employers, perhaps spurring the need for a second lottery, Taub said. A worker, for example, could receive five job offers from five different companies. If each of the five employers registers the same candidate electronically, the candidate could be chosen multiple times in the lottery; however, the candidate typically only accepts one offer — and that employer would go on to file for an H-1B visa.

“I think that’s a lot of what happened this year,” said Taub, who works with healthcare staffing firms to bring in workers on H-1B visas. .

Employers seeking H-1B workers must electronically register potential workers with the USCIS. The agency then holds a lottery and for those workers chosen, employers can then file H-1B petitions.

Taub said there’s no prohibition on candidates accepting more than one job offer, although companies cannot, themselves, submit duplicate candidates through the H-1B process.

Most healthcare employers require workers to sign employment agreements, so the workers won’t be applying for multiple companies, Taub said. However, not all firms require employment agreements, and companies may not know if a particular worker has been accepted for employment at other companies.