US suspends expedited processing for H-1B visas
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
said Friday that it will temporarily suspend expedited processing for all H-1B petitions starting April 3.
H-1B visas allow highly skilled workers to spend three to six years at sponsoring companies in the U.S. They are particularly important to Bay Area technology firms, which use them to fill engineering positions.
This suspension, to last up to six months, will apply to applications filed for the fiscal year 2018.
There is an annual cap of 85,000 H-1B visas for for-profit companies. Applications typically exceed that cap within the first week they become available. The agency received 236,000 petitions for fiscal year 2017. Before the agency’s move Friday, a company could pay an extra $1,225 processing fee to know within 15 calendar days whether a prospective employee is eligible.
Decisions on the visas are ultimately made by lottery, however, and access to the expedited track does not impact an applicant’s probability of a winning lottery entry.
Piyumi Samaratunga, an immigration attorney at the law firm Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete, said the suspension will significantly impact employers.
She said that she and her colleagues were baffled by the motivations behind the directive, adding that the $1,125 per premium processing application was a significant revenue stream for the government agency.
While it could be difficult to divorce the move Friday from the Trump administration’s broader immigration crackdown, some experts believed the agency’s decision to be apolitical.
“It has everything to do with an understaffed, overworked, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,” said Jason Finkelman, an Austin, Texas, immigration attorney, adding that the wait time for an H-1B visa in California is currently about eight months.
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/US-suspends-expedited-processing-for-H1-B-visas-10976085.php
