L. Francis Cissna, director of US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), has announced that the agency is making plans to simplify the H-1B visa lottery program beginning in 2019 for the 2020 fiscal year. These changes would potentially include an employer’s ability to preregister electronically for the H-1B lottery and, if selected in the lottery, file the H-1B petition with USCIS, instead of submitting full petitions before the lottery is completed. Cissna tells Bloomberg Law that he hopes that the agency will implement changes in time for when H-1B cases can be filed in April 2019, although the agency may not have sufficient time to do so. "[Y]ou don’t have to file and go through the hassle and effort and cost of preparing a full-blast petition,” Cissa says, touting the benefit of preregistration. “I think that’s a lot easier than the current situation.”