The USCIS (The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), which is the federal agency that runs the H-1B program has opened its window to accept H-1B visa petitions for the fiscal year 2019 from April 2, 2018.
The H-1B visa has an annual numerical limit of 65,000 visas under the regular cap and 20,000 visas under master’s exemption each fiscal year as mandated by the Congress.
The USCIS has warned rejections on the following matters:
- Duplicate applications
- Petitions requesting an earlier employment start date or date as “ASAP”
- Petitions submitted for premium processing service during this period
- Petition not including a copy of the beneficiary’s valid passport
Also, there will be an increased emphasis on fraud detection in petitions, and in the overall implementation of the programme.
A report from the USCIS, states that it will have zero tolerance for even minor errors in the application which eventually would lead to visa rejection.
Immigration experts are of the opinion that this year will see the toughest H-1B visa process with the rejection rate being much higher.
Sukanya Raman, Immigration Executive
Keywords: H-1B, Toughest, USCIS, Fiscal year 2019
