Kapoor Luther & Loftman Immigration Partners

It’s hard to overstate the role that foreign-born talent plays, and has long played, in America’s leadership and economic competitiveness in the fields of science and tech. This can’t be good for the USA.

The incredible and largely unnecessary level of scrutiny we are seeing in the adjudication of H-1B petitions by the US immigration service is adding significant cost and stress to US employers.

Bad news, and especially frustrating for those whose employment-based applications have been pending since 2007.

President Trump’s recent Executive Order (Buy American and Hire American) which, in part, appears to target the H-1B visa program is more rhetoric than substance. There will be no immediate changes made to, or impact upon, the H-1B program. The President simply directs the Departments of Labor, Homeland Security and Justice to review policies related to all visa programs and recommend changes to root out fraud and abuse, and to propose additional reforms so that H-1B vis...as are awarded to the most skilled or highest-paid applicants. The fact remains that any real substantive changes contemplated by the Administration will require legislative action from a divided Congress, or at least will involve going through the lengthy rulemaking process. Again, there will be no impact on the H-1B program in the near-term, and substantive changes in the long-term are uncertain and speculative.

USCIS announced today that it received 199,000 cap-subject H-1B petitions during the first week in April. On 04/11/2017, they conducted the lottery -- first for the advanced-degree allotment (20,000), and then for the general allotment (65,000). USCIS will reject and return the filing packets, with filing fees, of those which we were not selected in the lottery.

Good luck to all applicants in the lottery - but especially to the KL&L clients! ;-)

USCIS is trying to catch up on all the old, pending non-premium processes H-1B petitions, while getting ready to be slammed with another 85,000 or so new H-1B petitions for FY2018.