USCIS Will Temporarily Suspend Premium Processing for All H-1B Petitions
uscis.gov
uscis.gov
I'm in a potential limbo state here because:
- I am on a notice period for impending layoffs later in the month
- I found a new job, did all the documentation crap and my new company filed already. Hopefully, I'll get a decision in 2 weeks
- If not (say I get an RFE or get denied for the transfer), I lose my status because I couldn't transfer to the new company && my old company will lay me off, rendering my old h1b invalid
- In an RFE or denial, I will have to look for a job again in 60 days. For that h1b, it'll take them 7 months to tell me if it is approved or not. I can start working for the new company while this processing is going on though
- Say, I get laid off in those 7 months again. What does that mean for my status? Can I legally change to a new H1b with another company?
- Say, they come after 7 months and tell me it wasn't approved, does that mean I was working illegally so far?
This ambiguous and random pile of regulation over regulation sometimes makes me think, hey, it's better to just get out of this place and live somewhere else in peace. For all their talks of supporting legal immigration, US immigration process is incredibly slow, hinges on random pieces of paper and doesn't factor in that an individual can have life changing circumstances in this long duration. Life changing circumstances include marriages, family issues, health issues, lay offs etc.
The only way an individual can navigate this PROLONGED bureaucracy is if they have no dependents, no family issues, no health issues, no girlfriends/boyfriends/wives/husbands...so that they can keep fighting random nonsensical regulations, RFEs and denials.
Sigh!
AFAIK Its very rare to get a H1B denial or RFE, but YMMV
I have received an RFE in the past for stupid things like "Prove this fortune 500 company is real and paid you real wages".
This, after having sent my paystubs and W-2s.
That is what I read from his campaign. Of cause, for legals, he might not take action too soon before he had enough dealing with illegal immigrants. However legal or illegal, both are not welcomed by he and his supporters, just a matter of priority.
The current one affects anyone trying to file a new petition (including those that are cap-exempt). If someone wants to switch employers they cannot use premium processing, which affects their ability to travel internationally and/or move jobs.
> Starting May 26, 2015, USCIS will temporarily suspend premium processing for all H-1B extension of stay petitions until July 27, 2015. During this time frame, petitioners will not be able to file Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service, for a Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker, requesting an extension of the stay for an H-1B nonimmigrant.
In summary, yes the 2015 stay was just for extensions. No it wasn't for all applications.
Terminology matters.
In particular, I don't think many skilled employees with a global choice of employers are going to move to a country for a 3 or 6 year stint with deportation waiting at the end of the period. The costs and trouble of moving don't make it worthwhile, and it's hard to predict what life will bring - it's best to maximize all options. So I think anyone migrating to the US on a H1-B visa will also end up going through the permanent residency application process, just so they don't face a cliff edge after 6 years. That would make them migrants at the start of the process, rather than some kind of seasonal workers.
> Why We Are Temporarily Suspending Premium Processing for H-1B Petitions
> This temporary suspension will help us to reduce overall H-1B processing times. By temporarily suspending premium processing, we will be able to:
> Process long-pending petitions, which we have currently been unable to process due to the high volume of incoming petitions and the significant surge in premium processing requests over the past few years; and
> Prioritize adjudication of H-1B extension of status cases that are nearing the 240 day mark.
"This temporary suspension will help us to reduce overall H-1B processing times. By temporarily suspending premium processing, we will be able to:
Process long-pending petitions, which we have currently been unable to process due to the high volume of incoming petitions and the significant surge in premium processing requests over the past few years; and
Prioritize adjudication of H-1B extension of status cases that are nearing the 240 day mark. "
You'd think the $1,225 paid for every premium processing request would allow them to hire more people to tackle the backlog, but I guess not, maybe they just reroute that money elsewhere :P
There's a federal hiring freeze.
I guess if they were planning to use the premium processing fees to hire a bunch of extra people for the April application deadline the hiring freeze will stymie that, which just shows how stupid a general hiring freeze is.
> USCIS is funded primarily by immigration and naturalization benefit fees charged to applicants and petitioners. Fees collected from individuals or organizations filing immigration benefit requests are deposited into the Immigration Examinations Fee Account (IEFA). Congress created the IEFA in 1988, establishing the authority to recover the full cost of immigration benefit processing. This account represents approximately 95 percent of USCIS’ fiscal year (FY) 2016 total budget authority. The remaining budget authority comes from two other mandatory fee accounts and appropriated funding for the E-Verify program.
still, the uscis budget is not even a drop in the bucket:
Its popular with Trump's base, and I support some of Trump's policies. It may even prove to be a price worth paying for a short time. Long run its pure stupidity.
Making the world scared of coming to US can have irreversible effects.
The EB-1 visa is designed for the future Sergeys and it's an entirely different category than H1s. Then there is the EB-2 for the highly educated and are employment based. Finally there is the EB-3 for highly skilled immigrants.
H1b visas are for TEMPORARY, NON-Immigrant, workers in a specialty occupation.
Considering this is Hacker News, it suprising how immigration and H1 seem to be conflated almost every time H1 is discussed. If people want to immigrate to the US, an EB is the appropriate visa for highly skilled workers. Those using the H1 as a backdoor to a green card are essentially committing fraud if their intent when getting the H1 is to ultimately qualify for permanent residency. I would argue that an H1 should never be granted residency but instead an appropriate EB visa applied for instead.
You get terminated/leave your current job and activate the new 60 day grace period to find a new job. Provided that a H1B transfer to a new employer can take more than 60 days now. Does one need to leave the country forcefully?
https://www.uscis.gov/news/news-releases/uscis-publishes-fin...
Thats not how it works unless the company that terminated your employment also revokes your H1-B visa. if your transfer is filed before the revocation then you're mostly fine, but now that theres no premium processing who knows?
EDIT: Thanks everyone for clearing it out. Looks like it's allowed and documented here: https://www.murthy.com/2011/06/27/h1b-faqs/ (Ques. 5). Not an official USCIS link though.
Just FYI, this 60 day "grace" period is a bit of an unspoken rule, in reality though, you're expected to leave the US as soon as your job is terminated/visa is revoked, so make sure if you can that the terminating company doesn't revoke your visa within 45-60 days, or else you'll be in a lot of trouble, even if you find a company willing to transfer your visa in that time period.
It is a documented rule now since Jan 2017.
> This temporary suspension will help us to reduce overall H-1B processing times.
Yes!
Overall, This is good. A lot of "regular" cases are stuck in backlog (see: http://www.aila.org/infonet/processing-time-reports/csc/2017...). Ideally, you want them to increase the workforce to handle all the cases but if that's not possible this is the right response for the current situation.
That said, you (or your employer) can pay about $1k which sort of puts your application at the top of the pile. If you go down this route, you end up getting the approval in about 2 weeks.
There are reasons why people choose premium processing. For example if they have to go out of the country within the next 6-8 months, it is best if you have the H1b approval documents with you.
This does not include H1B transfers and other stuff USCIS handles.
To do something like that there would probably have to be special language written into the budget and it would have to be approved by Congress.
Paying a premium for expedited service is fine (I'm sure you've paid USPS a few extra bucks to mail your package faster), but I do agree that it should be applied judiciously.
Perhaps "premium processing" is expedited without a justification.
What would it take to turn Mexico and Canada into our 51st & 52nd states? So there aren't border controls or inspections there?
At least two wars.
I'm on your team, but we've got a long way to go to get America ready for open borders, even with our nearest neighbors that are longtime trading partners and allies.
http://i.imgur.com/xWbLa2f.jpg
But I get your point. :)
European nations are able to retain both language and national identity in spite of freedom of movement.
And this is why open borders are becoming increasingly unpopular in Europe.
There are challenges on both sides of the border, but losing sovereignty isn't one of them. It just takes both states agreeing to the terms, which has been done in numerous states across Europe for many years, without disaster.
All these details are negotiable. The question is: what would it actually take to do that?
The US can't provide universal health care to its own citizens...how could it offer it to tens of millions of poor Mexicans.
Gun control is an issue in the US now, imagine the arguments against it when really nasty criminals really do have sizable armories. Good luck convincing the average person to give up the right to carry a pistol.
I agree there is a challenge here (because I support universal healthcare and I support open borders, while seeing how that could be disastrous for fiscal responsibility). It really should have happened years ago...Mexico would be economically healthier (though they're actually in better shape than most Americans have been led to believe), and it would be easier to find a path toward universal healthcare across the continent, so that'd no longer be a major factor for where people choose to live.
Also, by even the most pessimistic measure immigrants become a net positive for our economy by the second generation...and that fact is a big part of US economic growth over most of its existence. So, we just need to find a way to hasten that transition to contributing member of society, reduce the inefficiencies of the "emergency room and debt" universal healthcare system we currently have for immigrants, the homeless, etc., and negotiate with Mexico to normalize services across the continent (normalizing means we've got to start to catch up with Canada, too).
Sure, it's a longterm project, but I think it's worth doing. Economic growth in the US has slowed tremendously. Expanding our trade with Mexico, including free movement of human capital, would be a great thing, IMHO.
We're just in such an ugly time in our history. People are lashing out at any convenient scapegoat, and a few billionaires are happy to point at Mexicans, lest people start to question their own motives and actions.
Most Mexicans are good people (like everyone else), but there are "bad guys" and horrors. What's the argument for allowing their spread?
Not that interested in piles of mutilated corpses in major towns...you can find plenty of examples of narco terrorism like that.
We should own that, instead of shaking our heads and lamenting how awful Mexican crime is. It is American crime, too, it just happens south of the border because that's how the economic incentives our failed drug policy dictate things will go. Yes, there's higher corruption, at the police and judicial level, and that plays a role. And, yes, there is higher poverty, which empowers criminals and enables recruiting. All are solvable and a significant portion of the solutions are on our side of the border. We've been shitting on Mexico with our failed drug policy for decades.
That being said, if that happened today the cartels still exist and they'll exist for several generations and they'll still have military, police, and government collaborators. Unless that goes away then the mindset which allowed the cartels to engage in what is essentially a cold civil war and has allowed more than 100,000 people to be killed (many tortured) will continue to exist.
Until that stops existing there's no way in hell the US should open their borders and allow movement into US territory. You'd have the cartels (heavily armed and financed) moving into US cities and claiming turf, and then you'd have that violence here and even more guns available. It just isn't worth it. The cartels could be more powerful than the Italian mob ever was.
If the cartels lose influence and Mexico becomes a much less violent place in a few generations, maybe then you can consider opening the borders. But how would it happen any time soon without harming a lot of innocent people?
It's hard to exaggerate the brutality or (potential) reach of the cartels:
Doesn't open borders mean US law enforcement, like the DEA/FBI, gets to operate in Mexico now? How would the cartels survive under that, if they can't even survive in the US?
Why would the cartels not move into the US given the chance? You underestimate their reach, there's no way the DEA/FBI could shut them down when they can't control the drug war as it is.
If you aren't aware of them in the US it's because they aren't as open about violence.
I mean, they don't want to be a "prison gang", do they?
Remember, the reason cartels exist is because of corrupt Mexican police, something the FBI is good at controlling.
But I guess a real open-borders system would require things like common currencies or common judicial system across North America?
That would be a disaster, and would hurt the dollar and therefore US NatSec and power.
It's not. Cultural, language differences, asymmetric shocks, many reasons why. It would be the same catastrophe as the euro, where the euro is severely undervalued for Germany's economy, unfairly helping their exports, and severely overvalued for Greece, unfairly harming their exports.
We could just rename Canada to Ultra Michigan and reannex Mexico to Texas, and merge Texas/Mexico with Oklahoma, to keep the count at 50.
― Oscar Wilde
Any decent large corporation of this size should handle a large number of customers with ease. That number, I guess, would be orders magnitude more than USCIS' incoming requests. You may argue the case for USCIS is more complicated. Granted that, I still think the amount of work is much larger than USCIS.
[1] "USCIS consists of 19,000 federal employees and contractors working at 223 offices around the world." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Citizenship_and_...
It's literally how they fund 99% of their expenses.
1. So if I want to change companies now I have to wait for few months to get the new petition in hand. Tell me I can't travel to my home country during this period!
This is essentially friction to job changing. This is clearly against the current administration's policy of Murica first and no to cheap labor.
2. On OPT ? Wait for unknown period of time to know if H1B gets picked in lottery or if it gets approved. Better go home.
3. So far FB, Google etc are always happy doing premium processing where as cheapo Indian companies avoided it. This is another big boost to cheap labor importers.
You find out if you were picked for the lottery at about the same time for both standard and premium.
Honestly, they should raise the prices to $5000 with exceptions for financial hardships(they already have this) to weed out non-essential usage of premium processing.
There is nothing called H1b transfer. It's a brand new application with some extra features like no lottery, no wait-till-Oct1, etc.
IMO, all H1b fees should be increased by $5000 and processed in 15 days.