Many of our readers know that the H-1B visa is a critical and very common work visa used routinely by U.S. employers to hire skilled foreign nationals. The H-1B visa has an annual cap for first-time [...]
Many of our readers are aware that USCIS has received sufficient number of H-1B cap registrations to fill the annual H-1B quota and they have completed the random lottery to allocate the available visa numbers. Selected registrants should already have been notified. [...]
Spring and early summer are generally busy period for recent foreign college graduates as far as employment immigration is concerned. On one hand, foreign college graduates are either applying for their [...]
The Edakunni settlement pursuant to which USCIS agreed to bundle and approve at the same time concurrently-filed I-539/I-765 applications for H-4/L-2 and H-4 EAD with an underlying I-129 H-1B or L-1 petition is set to expire on January 18, 2025. We anticipate that USCIS will stop the bundling of concurrently-filed H-4/L-2/EAD applications with H-1B/L-1 [...]
USCIS has just released the December 18, 2024 final rule “Modernizing H-1B Requirements, Providing Flexibility in the F-1 Program, and Program Improvements Affecting Other Nonimmigrant Workers” which seeks to “modernize” the H-1B program [...]
USCIS has announced that they have reached the H-1B cap limit for fiscal year 2025 (FY 2025). This means that they will not be conducting additional lottery rounds of selection after the initial two rounds. This also means [...]
October 1 is the first day of the government fiscal year and also the date when H-1B “cap” applicants in the U.S. have their status changed automatically to H-1B. This is a reminder that employees who may not have been [...]
USCIS has just completed the second round of the H-1B cap selection lottery and notified the selected applicants. The August 2024 selection round was due to the fact that a (significant) number of H-1B cap registrations [...]
After the initial H-1B cap filing window closed on June 30, 2024, we expect the second lottery to be conducted and results to be announced in late July or early August 2024. For instance, during last year, the second lottery results took until mid-August to be announced and all secondary selection registrants to be [...]
Many of our clients and readers are aware that the Department of Homeland Security is significantly increasing the USCIS filing fees starting April 1, 2024. We published a detailed alert for all of the fees (see details); however, for [...]
