Starting this month, applicants filing multiple petitions for H-1B visas, or temporary visas given to foreign skilled workers, will have them thrown out and their fees will not be returned.

Government workers have discovered that many people have tried to cheat the H-1B lottery system and improve their odds by filing multiple petitions within the same company for one employee. In previous years, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services let the trick pass, but now any petition found to have duplicates will be removed from the lottery.

Citizenship and Immigration Services currently limits H-1B visas to 65,000. Because that number is exceeded so quickly, the government will, starting this year, allow a five-day period to collect all applications that will then be selected by a computerized lottery system.

“[The H-1B visas] are intended to level the playing field so that every employer has the chance to employ an IT worker,” said Sean Saucier, a spokesperson for Immigration Services.

About half of all H-1B visa holders are currently from India, according to recent government statistics.

In addition to losing the application, companies will also lose their application filing fees, which can range from $1,570 to $2,320, depending on the number of visas that a particular company sponsors. Saucier says that it is common for big companies to turn in applications for several employees each year. Indian IT-company Infosys Technology Ltd. received approval for 4,000 petitions for H-1B visas in 2007 alone.