The United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS) will begin accepting petitions for H-1B working visas on April 1, 2009.Petitions may be submitted for employment to commence on or after October 1, 2009.It is imperative that eligible applicants submit their petition to the CIS on April 1, 2009 or as soon thereafter in order to avoid another potential blackout. As background, there are 65,000 H-1B visas available each fiscal year (October 1 to September 30), plus another 20,000 H-1B visas for those who have attained a US Master’s degree or higher.For fiscal years 2007 and 2008, the visa cap had been reached on the very first day of filing on April 1. To avoid the deluge of petitions, the CIS altered the filing policy last year (2009 fiscal year) to allow individuals to file petitions from April 1 through April 7.The CIS received approximately 163,000 H-1B petitions during this time period.Clearly well beyond the number of available visas, all of the H-1B petitions were subject to a random lottery to determine whether it would be accepted for processing or not.The odds for acceptance were therefore about 50%.All those not accepted were rejected and returned back to the Petitioner.As such, there have been no more H-1B visas available for this entire fiscal year, resulting in individuals becoming out of status in the US. This has been a significant problem as the H-1B nonimmigrant visa is the most used visa category for work authorization in the US.The H-1B visa is used by US companies -- both small independent companies and large multinational corporations -- to gain temporary employment authorization for professional workers. To qualify for an H-1B visa, the petitioning company must be able to prove the following requirements:(1) the position which the immigrant will fill is a “specialty occupation”, and (2) the immigrant meets the requirements for the specialty occupation.In other words, the company must prove that the position offered is a professional position that mandates an individual with at least a bachelor’s degree or equivalent in a specific field, and that the individual sponsored has that particular type of bachelor’s degree or work experience equivalence. The H-1B visa allows the individual to work in the US for an initial period of up to three years.The H-1B visa can thereafter be extended for another three years, and then at one year intervals provided certain requirements are met.While working in the US as an H-1B visa holder, the individual can then undertake the steps necessary to obtain lawful permanent residency. The family members of an H-1B visa holder are also able to derive benefits for themselves.The spouse and unmarried children under age twenty-one are eligible to obtain an H-4 dependent visa in order to accompany the H-1B visa holder to the US. Accordingly, as the laws allow the submission of a petition up to six (6) months before employment is to commence, individuals may submit H-1B petitions with the CIS starting April 1, 2009 for the 2010 fiscal year. Due to the significant importance of H-1B visas, it is clear that there will be the same mad rush of petitions for the 2010 fiscal year on April 1.It is therefore extremely important to secure a sponsor and commence preparations of the petition right away to take advantage of the opportunity.
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