US Immigration: Plans To Begin FY21 H-1B Application Process In Mar 2020

20 Jan 2020

The US will begin its current process for awarding H-1B work visas for the financial year 2021 from March 2020, allowing firms to enroll the names of employees that they plan to send to the nation at the US Citizenship & Immigration Services (U.S.C.I.S).

In January 2020, the USA abandoned its decades-long rule of permitting firms to file applications for the temporary work permit announced to high tech workers and rather mandated them to enroll the names of individuals that they intend to send.

The Homeland Security Department (D.H.S), parent of U.S.C.I.S, last week announced that it expects to finalize the names from the enrolled list who are able to apply for the US H-1 B visa by end of the March.

New US H-1B Visa Process

The US has managed that it plans to decrease costs & time for applicants below the latest process. A firm has to pay USD 10 to enroll an applicant’s name. The US H-1B visa application fee USD 4,500 requires to be paid only when the applicant is chosen.

Analysts, however, had increased concerns that the process of visa could get postponed below the latest process, as we had reported earlier.

Generally, the H-1B ‘season’ continues from the beginning of March to the 2nd week of April. At now, however, it will continue from the beginning of March to the minimum end of July 2020. Typically, this means that U.S.C.I.S will take even higher time to decide these cases and several firms or global nationals may miss the 1 October start date.

At the enrollment stage, firms will require to give only some fundamental information about the firm and the applicant. Once the applicants have been chosen by an online lottery, then the firms will have to file the complete US H-1B visa application for those selected candidates.

Indian citizens are the most significant recipients of H-1B visas that the USA announces to get highly qualified experts to work in the nation. Every year, U.S.C.I.S announces 65,000 US H-1B visas with a supplementary 20,000 places for those who already have a US master’s degree or above.

As a consequence, the denial rate of US H-1B applications from Indian IT firms has shifted from 6 percent in the year 2015 to 24 percent in the year 2019. In 2019, 8 out of the top 10 firms that got a maximum number of US H-1B visas were non-Indian firms.

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