The start date of application process for H-1B visas has been announced by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. According to USCIS, the registration process will start from 9 March and continue till 25 March for the fiscal year 2022.
The traditional lottery system to issue H-1B visa will be continued till 31 December, 2021, announced the Biden administration. This year will be the second year in which the e-registration process will be adopted.
What is H-1B visa?
It is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.
Each year, from nations like India and China, tens of thousands of employees of employees are employed by technology companies. During the last filing season, 2.75 lakh registrations from sponsoring employers for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2021 were received by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
USCS said that the prospective petitioners and representatives will be able to fill out petitioner and beneficiary information and submit their registrations during the registration period.
If enough registrations are received by the agency by 25 March, then by 31 March it shall randomly select registrations and send selection notifications by 31 March.
A maximum of 65,000 H-1B visas can be issued by USCIS in a year. As far as foreign students who have completed higher studies from a US university in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects, another 20,000 H-1B visas will be issued.
In January, the traditional lottery system to decide the successful applicants for the H-1B visas was done away with by USCIS.
Prioritization Of Wages
In order to protect the economic interests of American workers as well as to ensure that most highly skilled foreign workers benefit from the temporary employment programme, the wages will be prioritized by USCIS.
More time is given to the immigration agency by the Biden administration to develop, test and implement modifications to the registration system.
There was a rule in the previous trump-administration, which rescinded the work authorization for H4 visa holders. These are spouses of those possessing H-1B work visas, with majority being highly-skilled Indian women. This rule was also withdrawn by Biden Administration.
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