Many companies go through restructuring due to change in strategy, cost cutting, mergers or downturn in their business due to situations like COVID-19. In such cases, when those companies do job cuts and layoffs, some of them could be H1B holders as well. In the past, there was no concept of grace period for such H1B holders and they were …
H1B Extensions Pending – USCIS 240 Day Rule ? Can Work ? Denied ?
USCIS processing times for H1B visa petitions can sometimes get very long and some H1B holders may end up in situations, where they hit the 240 days mark and not sure, if they can work or not. As the H1B premium Processing is suspended until Feb 2019, many H1B holders are in similar situations with the delays in processing times. …
F1 Visa Renewal Experience with STEM OPT using Dropbox – India
Many students avoid traveling during STEM OPT, if their F1 visa stamp has expired on their passport. They are worried that there would be issues with F1 stamping and they cannot come back…while some of the fear is true and understandable, but there are positive outcomes as well. Below is an experience shared by our reader, Heer with successful F1 …
H1B Historical Data – Lottery vs 85K Quota, Masters vs Regular Split
As you know, DHS proposed a pre-registration rule for H1B lottery recently. As part of the propose rule documentation, USCIS revealed many of their internal H1B statistics data regarding petitions filed, overall lottery numbers, premium petitions, US masters vs Regular quota filings, etc. This H1B data used to be only provided on request and not widely published to everyone. Now, …
H1B Visa Pre-registration Requirements Proposed Rule, Lottery, Analysis
As announced in Fall 2018 Regulatory Agenda, DHS and USCIS published the proposed new H1B petition pre-registration rule in Federal Register for public review and comments. It had an expected date of Oct 2018 for Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), but got delayed to December. Actual proposed rule document is 139 pages. We will cover the below aspects of …