News Update - March 20, 2010H-1B Time Is Here Again!U.S.C.I.S. will begin accepting new H-1B petitions beginning April 1, 2010, for employment to start on October 1, 2010. So far, no one is predicting that there will be a huge rush of H-1B petitions sufficient to quickly exhaust the 85,000 visa quota (including U.S. master cap cases). As most readers are aware, the H-1B cap last year held until December 2009 because of the economic recession and lack of hiring by U.S. organizations instead of being exhausted on the first day of filing as had been the case in previous years . U.S.C.I.S. records show that major Indian consulting firms petitioned for many less in FY 2010 (10/1/09-9/30/10) than in previous years with Infosys 440 visas and Wipro 1964. This year, the major discouragements are a crackdown on H-1B petitioners with a planned 25,000 site visits by September 30, 2010, and on H-1B employees who do not work on the petitioner's worksite and are perceived as outside the petitioner's control. Nevertheless a rebounding economy and many companies repaying their TARP money making them once again eligible for H-1B petitioning gives promise that it will not take so long to fill up the H-1B quota for FY 2011 (10/1/10-9/30/11). † The author is a 26+ year practitioner of immigration law based in New York City. He was awarded the Sidney A. Levine prize for best legal writing at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1977 and has written extensively on immigration over the past years for the ethnic newspapers, World Journal, Sing Tao, Pakistan Calling, Muhasha and OCS. He has testified as an expert on immigration in civil court proceedings and was recognized by the Taiwan government in 1985 for his work protecting human rights. His article, "The Bush Temporary Worker Proposal and Comparative Pending Legislation: an Analysis" was Interpreter Releases' cover display article at the American Immigration Lawyers Association annual conference in 2004, and his victory in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a case of first impression nationwide, Firstland International v. INS, successfully challenged INS' policy of over 40 years of revoking approved immigrant visa petitions under a nebulous standard of proof. Its value as precedent, however, was short-lived as it was specifically targeted by the Administration in the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004. ‡ This article © 2010 Alan Lee, Esq.
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Copyright © 2003-2012 Alan Lee,
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