Philadelphia Immigration Lawyer Blog

It’s not too early to start preparing for April 1, 2008, which is the first day the USCIS will begin accepting H1-B visa applications for the 2009 fiscal year. If last year is any indication, April 1 may also be the last day for filing too! It seems virtually certain that the H1-B cap for the 2009 fiscal year will be reached, just like last year, on the very first day for filing.

The H1-B visa program is the very popular way that U.S. employers are able to hire highly educated foreign professional workers for "specialty occupations" - jobs that require at least a bachelor's degree or the equivalent in the field of specialty. H1-B visas are limited to 65,000 per fiscal year (which are actually reduced by a specific allocation of 6,800 H1-B visas that are set aside each fiscal year for nationals of Singapore and Chile). There is also an additional 20,000 H1-B visas that are available to those with Masters Degrees or higher, earned from a U.S. university.

Employers need to start planning now, as do graduating foreign students who are in the United States in F visa status who hope to qualify for an H1-B visa.

Given the last minute crush of applications last year, one of the very practical problems I experienced as an immigration attorney was obtaining the required degree equivalency report where the beneficiary of the H1-B application obtained their degree from a foreign college or university. Last year, the several services that provide such equivalency reports were so inundated with requests in the week or so leading up to the first day for filing that many of them could not guarantee that their report would be ready in time for filing day. We all need to keep this in mind this year and get those reports done as much in advance as we can.

One of the other issues was getting the appropriate letter from a college or school where the student had completed all the academic requirements for, say, their Masters but were not going to get their actual Masters degree diploma until later in May or June.

Over the next few weeks, I intend to post articles on this blawg on various aspects of the H1-B program—set out the basics of the visa itself, outline the application process, discuss what H1-B applications are not subject to the annual cap, describe alternatives to an H1-B visa when someone is shut out once the cap is reached, etc. In a few days, I start with a posting on the basics of an H1-B visa.