H-1B Strategies for Employers

At Challa Law, it is our mission to arm and equip our clients with knowledge. We know that when an employer is confident about immigration processes, their employees are confident about immigration processes. Decreased worry and stress about the legal implications of bringing in international resources leads to greater productivity and success. That’s what we want to provide for all the businesses that trust the Challa Law name.

With H-1B season fully upon us, we want to briefly review the H-1B lottery process, as well as cover some tips and suggestions for providing strong evidence for your employee’s petition. You can also find all of this information and more in our webinar from March 2, 2022.

H-1B Lottery

Registration for the lottery began on March 1 at noon EST and will run till March 18 at noon EST. Registration is conducted on my.uscis.gov. Here are a few things to keep in mind when thinking about registering an employee for the H-1B lottery:

  • The petitioner (employer) must pay $10 for each beneficiary (employee) they register
  • The petitioner needs to provide basic demographic information about the beneficiary, as well as basic information about their company to register
  • A petitioner can only register the beneficiary for one position
  • A beneficiary can be registered by multiple companies

There are 85,000 H-1B visas allotted per fiscal year. The first 25,000 are selected from a pool of master’s degree holders only. Anyone who is not selected in that initial drawing is then put into the pool of all H-1B lottery registrants and names are drawn again for the remaining visa slots.

Last year, 308,613 people registered for the H-1B lottery (a 12% increase than the previous year) and USCIS initially selected 87,500 names. This was significantly lower than the amount the had chosen the year prior. This caused USCIS to conduct a second-round lottery in July 2021 and a third-round lottery in November 2021.

USCIS states that they will notify petitioners (and attorneys) electronically whether the beneficiary was selected or not by March 31. The notice will include a service center filing location and a designated filing window. Employees may begin work on the first day of the fiscal year, October 1, 2022.

Cap Gap for F-1 students: if the H-1B petition is filed before the F-1 OPT work authorization expires, then the employee is allowed to keep working for the employer with the H-1B receipt notice should their OPT expire before October 1.

Tips on Strong Evidence for a Successful Petition

Proving Education Levels Meets H-1B Requirements

  • We suggest requesting a degree evaluations if degrees are from a foreign instituation to determine equivalency to US degrees

Proving the Position is a Specialty Occupation

  • We suggest providing a very detailed job description with duties outlined clearly, but not so complex that someone outside your field could not understand it

 

“Imagine you are explaining this job to a ten-year-old”

– Lakshmi Challa

 

We hope you find this information helpful. Please email us at info@challalaw.com with any additional questions.

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Green Card Backlog: Could choosing consular processing be your solution?

The journey to obtaining your green card can be a long process. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused backlogs for all USCIS petitions but significantly affected those who wish to adjust to permanent residency within the United States. Some adjustments are taking up to two years to process in certain service centers.

In recent months, as the pandemic is seemingly winding down and other countries are beginning to soften their COVID-19 regulations, we have seen a decrease in interview wait times at some foreign consulates. Now the question is: is consular processing going to be the quickest pathway to obtaining your green card?

By analyzing the projected wait times on the USCIS website, it is easy to compare them to the processing times listed on the Department of State’s website, specific to each consulate. Below we have provided two charts that can be used to compare processing times for our clients from the United Kingdom who are filing under the “US citizen filing for spouse, parent, or child category”:

 

Family Based Adjustment of Status within the United States

FORM NAME

DISCRIPTION OF BENEFIT SOUGHT ESTIMATED PROCESSING TIME

Form I-130

Application Alien Relative

13 – 18.5 months

Form I-485 Application for Adjustment of Status to a Permanent Resident of the United States 12 – 28.5 months
Form I-131 Application for Travel abroad while I-485 is pending with USCIS 11 – 15 months
Form I-765 Application for Employment Authorization while I-485 is pending

11.5 – 15 months

 

Consular Processing Green Card Process

PROCESS NAME DISCRIPTION OF BENEFIT SOUGHT ESTIMATED PROCESSING TIME
Form I-130 Application Alien Relative 13 – 18.5 months
Transfer from USCIS to the NVC If a visa is available to you USCIS will send your petition to the National Visa Center 4 – 8 weeks
NVC Case Creation and payment of fees Once the NVC receives your petition they will open up a case for you. This will prompt you to pay the necessary NVC fees. 2 – 6 weeks
Submit DS-260 application and supporting civil documents Once you have submitted all the necessary documents the NVC will again review the application and documents 3 – 4 months

If you have questions about whether choosing consular processing could be a better option for you than filing an I-485 adjustment, reach out to us at info@challalaw.com.

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