Articles Posted in H1B Visas

At the American Immigration Lawyers Association Conference today, we heard updates about the increased H1B visa RFE’s and rate of denials. As the practice of H1B filings will continue to become more complex, it is important to know how to file and document H1B cases in specific occupations to increase the approval chances.

Attorney Ekaterina Powell from our office has handled numerous H-1B cases and has prepared this article to share her expertise. Now that the H-1B annual cap for fiscal year 2013 has been reached, the individuals who have missed this year’s cap are looking for other options to extend their stay and apply for H-1B next April.

We would like to remind those who wish to use next year’s H-1B Cap to plan in advance and have everything ready long before April 1, 2013. The accelerated speed with which H-1B cap was reached this year may be a sign that the visas will run out even faster next April.

A great update from AILA, the pace of filing cap-subject petitions increases as USCIS closes in on reaching the H1B cap. The week of May 7, it was receiving an average of 840 per day . The next week it was 1060, the next week 1280, and the week of May 28 it was 1800 per day.

As of June 1, USCIS reported that 55,600 non-advanced degree cap-subject filings had been received. So, if the most recent week’s “burn rate” continued, USCIS would reach 65,000 by early next week.

However, it is not that simple. Each year, USCIS accepts more than the 65,000 before it starts rejecting petitions, since it must account for a certain percentage of withdrawals and denials. However, the agency has stopped publishing what that number (previously known as the target number) is, so the actual number it will receive before the gate comes down is unknown. We will keep you posted.

So the race is on, only a few days left for the H1B cap to be reached. USCIS has received approximately 55,600 H-1B petitions subject to regular-cap (for bachelor’s degree holders) and 18,700 H-1B petitions subject to master-cap (for U.S. advanced degree holders). Therefore, there are about 9,400 spots available under the regular-cap, and 1,300 spots left under the master-cap.

Hurry Up, you may just make it. Is it an indication that our economy is doing much better?

Pic Source: http://redbus2us.com/

Still time to apply for H1B Visas, but numbers are running fast. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that, as of May 18, 2012, it has received approximately 48,400 H-1B petitions counting towards the congressionally-mandated 65,000 limit.

USCIS also confirmed that it has received approximately 17,500 H-1B petitions for employees with advanced degrees from U.S. colleges and universities. The annual limit on H-1B petitions in the advanced degree category is 20,000. Accordingly, USCIS is still accepting H-1B petitions under both the general cap and the advanced degree cap.

USCIS has received approximately 42,000 H-1B petitions subject to regular-cap (for bachelor’s degree holders) and 16,000 H-1B petitions subject to master-cap (for U.S. advanced degree holders).

Therefore, there are about 23,000 spots available under the regular-cap, and 4,000 spots left under the master-cap. Hurry and file fast.

The reliability and fairness of our immigration system can be evaluated only if the government’s procedures and activities are transparent. The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the Legal Action Center, and in cooperation with counsel at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, filed a FOIA lawsuit in July 2010 against Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) seeking the public release of records concerning agency policies and procedures related to fraud investigations in the H-1B program. There was significant public interest in these records because USCIS’s H-1B practices have caused confusion and concern among U.S. businesses that legitimately depend on temporary foreign workers with specialized knowledge to operate successfully.

On Friday, May 18, 2012, after protracted litigation, DHS and USCIS released unredacted copies of all of the documents sought by AILA. The history of the litigation went as follows:

The complaint brought by AILA alleged that DHS and USCIS violated FOIA when they wrongfully withheld information responsive to two FOIA requests and failed to timely respond to AILA’s requests. The complaint asked the court to enjoin defendants from continuing to withhold information relevant to the requests, to declare the requested records are not exempt from disclosure, and to award any other relief that the court deems just and equitable.

A lot has been said about this story, and it seems the wrong point keep coming back. The workers is not able to find work because of the H1B visa. This is a myth and a wrong statement.

This is the story to recap. Two days after Obama talked with the wife of the engineer during an online town hall and offered to take a look at her unemployed husband’s resume, the wife said the president has followed through.

The wife told The Associated Press that she got a call from a White House deputy chief of staff, who told her Obama had made a personal point of making sure the matter was taken care of. The deputy said the resume was sent to contacts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area where the couple lives.

We just obtained this information based on reports from the California Service Center, Laguna Niguel, CA, on April 5, 2012, that 22,323 cap-subject H-1B petitions have been received as of April 4, 2012. Approximately 25% of these cases are for U.S. advanced degrees. According to USCIS, the number of filings received in the first few days of the H-1B season is almost double the number of filings received by USCIS during the same time last year.

We will keep you posted any new H1B case filers, better hurry up!!!

Our office is busy with completing all our H1B petitions to be ready for April 1 deadline. This is a recent update regarding prevailing wage issues. Department of Labor issued revised Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for the H-1B 2012 filing season. I wanted to cover the Prevailing Wage topic.

Many of our readers will undergo labor certification in the process of obtaining permanent residence. Those who have been through the process know that documenting the prevailing wage is among the many challenges of a labor certification.

The prevailing wage is the average wage paid to similarly employed workers in a particular occupation in the geographic area of intended employment. In accordance with procedures issued in 1998, in most cases the State Employment Workforce Agencies (SWAs) are required to determine the prevailing wage rate based on wage surveys conducted by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics under the occupational employment statistics (OES) program. There are exceptions to this for certain positions that are covered under the Davis-Bacon Act (DBA) or other Service Contract Act (SCA), or where there is a negotiated collective bargaining agreement.

Administrative site visits of U.S. employers in connection with H-1B petitions are becoming increasingly common as USCIS is trying to preserve the integrity of H-1B program in response to the USCIS H-1B Benefit Fraud Analysis report of September 2008. This article is presented by Attorney Ekaterina Powell from our office.

Administrative site visits are conducted as part of USCIS anti-fraud initiative. The main goal of a site visit is to verify the beneficiary’s H-1B employment with the petitioning entity. Employers are not provided any notice in advance of the site visit, which may be a problem for unprepared employers who do not know what to expect and how to prepare for the site visit.

In the recently released California Service Center Stakeholder Engagement Meeting on November 8, 2011, CSC points out that, in connection with an administrative site visit, petitioners should be prepared to answer any questions related to the terms and conditions of H-1B employment.