We caught up with Richard Wilner, founding member at Wilner & O’Reilly to ask why April 1st is so important in the world of immigration law.
Why is this month so important for immigration law?
It’s basically tax season for business immigration lawyers. H-1B visas are visas for professionals. According to the government, professionals are those with at least a bachelor’s degree seeking to work in a position that requires a bachelor’s degree.
There are only 65,000 of these types of visas available per year and the soonest they can be filed is on April 1 for a start date of employment of October 1.
Prior to 2008, the 65,000 visas were used up within the first few days of filing availability. Over the past several years it has taken a number of months to reach the quota. Based on feedback from a number of stakeholders, USCIS anticipates that it may receive more petitions than the H-1B cap between April 1, 2013 and April 5, 2013.
USCIS will monitor the number of petitions received and notify the public of the date on which the numerical limit of the H-1B cap has been met. This date is known as the final receipt date. If USCIS receives more petitions than it can accept, USCIS will use a lottery system to randomly select the number of petitions required to reach the numerical limit. USCIS will reject petitions that are subject to the cap and are not selected, as well as petitions received after it has the necessary number of petitions needed to meet the cap.
The lottery for the H-1B cap was last used in April 2008.
What does that mean to companies with employees who are interested in applying for visas?
Basically, if the case is not received by the government by April 4th or 5th, 2013, it might be too late. It is our goal to courier all cases to the immigration service on April 1, 2013.
Where can companies and individuals get more information?
We have additional information on our website, or just send us an email.
