Why did the Immigration Bureau delay the acceleration of h 1b? What are the effects?

In a word, the pressure to deal with H 1B is too great.

In recent years, the number of applications for H 1B has far exceeded the annual quota. The annual quota of H 1B is 65,000, plus 20,000 applicants for master's degree or above in the United States. In recent years, the number of people applying for H 1B has increased year by year, and the immigration office is under great pressure. 20 14 The total number of cases accepted by the Immigration Bureau in the first five working days of April was172,000; 20 15 years to 233,000 copies; 2016,236,000 copies, nearly three times the quota.

The earliest time for H 1B application with annual quota limit can be submitted is the first working day in April. 20 17 April 3rd this year is Monday, which will be the first day that the Immigration Bureau will start accepting H 1B applications this year. If the number of cases received by the Immigration Bureau exceeds the above-mentioned annual quota in the first five working days of April, the Immigration Bureau will no longer accept the applications submitted later from the sixth working day, and randomly select cases from the applications received in the first five working days for trial.

In these cases, if the application needs urgent processing service, according to the regulations, the immigration office needs to give the trial result within 15 days. Although the expedited application needs to pay an extra $65,438 +0.225 to the Immigration Bureau, there are still many applicants who are willing to pay this extra fee out of anxiety or various considerations in exchange for knowing the news in advance.

In the past two years, the Immigration Bureau has racked its brains to ensure the completion of the increasing number of H 1B cases since April every year, including more and more urgent requests.

The first thing that the Immigration Bureau thinks of is to make a fuss about the "start/acceptance time". The processing time for expedited processing 15 days shall be counted from the date when the Immigration Bureau accepts the case. However, in recent years, the case of H 1B needs to be decided by lottery, so the Immigration Bureau has reason to specify the starting date. Therefore, on 20 15, the Immigration Bureau announced that the starting date for accepting all urgent cases was April 27th. By 20 16, the start time of urgent cases was further postponed to May 12. That is to say, on 20 16 last year, the immigration bureau could only guarantee to complete the processing of cases requiring urgent processing before the end of May. In fact, it has been nearly two months since the lottery was completed on April 7.

Judging from last year's situation, the Immigration Bureau can barely guarantee that the expedited cases will be completed before the end of May. In fact, for cases that do not need to be expedited, the preliminary trial results can be received in the middle and late September or even later at the latest (especially for employees who are overseas). As we all know, H 1B should come into effect on June 10, so this has brought inconvenience to many employers and employees of H1B.

If you want to postpone/change the employer's schedule, please be sure to finish it before April.

The Immigration Bureau announced that it would stop the express delivery service of H 1B from April 3 this year, apparently to prepare for the application season of H 1B this year.

Lawyer Meng Xiaojie reminded that starting from April 3, this policy will not only affect H 1B applications limited by this year's quota, but all applications of H 1B, including H 1B extension applications and employer change applications.

So if you are in the state of H 1B and need to submit an application for extension or change of employer, you should pay special attention.

Regarding the application for employer change, although H 1B's application for employer change has been submitted and can legally work for the new employer, the potential risk is that once H 1B's application for employer change is not passed in the middle of a new job, H 1B's employees will lose their legal status. For other questions about changing employers, please refer to "Things you must know when changing jobs".

Therefore, many cautious employees will want to report to the new company after the H 1B submitted by the new employer is approved. In this case, in order to ensure the input time, we will also request urgent service to ensure that the results can be produced within 15 days. This service will also be suspended after April 3.

Under the current circumstances, the processing time announced by the Immigration Bureau has reached 7-8 months or even longer for delayed applications such as changing employers.

The serious delay in the delay case of H 1B was also confirmed in the suspension announcement of the Immigration Bureau. According to the regulations, after the same employer submits an application for extension of time for H 1B, the employees of H 1B still have legal work permits within 240 days after the original H 1B expires. However, judging from the current progress, if it is not urgent, the Immigration Bureau may not be able to guarantee that the original employee H 1B will expire within 240 days. Therefore, in this announcement, the Immigration Bureau mentioned that the expedited service was suspended to ensure that these cases that had been delayed for 240 days were given priority.

Therefore, if you want to change your employer or postpone the work now and get the results as soon as possible, please be sure to submit your application and urgent service request before April 3.

Without the expedited option, when can I know the result of applying for H 1B this year?

Let's start with the application for H 1B this year. If the Immigration Bureau does not allow expediting, what impact will it have on the approval or process?

If you don't plan to expedite this year's H 1B application, then this should be good news, so that your case processing progress will not be disturbed by expedited processing, and you may get a reply faster than in previous years.

I'm sorry if you originally planned to speed up the application for H 1B this year, but your plan for this year must be readjusted. Originally, you might have planned to know the outcome of your case before the end of May, but now, it is not until the end of April or June at the latest until you know that you have signed the contract.

The cancellation of all expedited processing should be beneficial to the overall progress of the H 1B case. Lawyer Meng Xiaojie predicts that this will help all cases with limited H 1B to receive the preliminary examination results within a relatively reasonable time, that is, whether they are passed or supplemented.

According to Meng Xiaojie's previous visit and exchange in the California Processing Center, the H 1B case in the California Processing Center did not distinguish between ordinary processing units and expedited processing units. That is to say, each immigration officer who handles H 1B has both urgent cases and non-urgent cases, which are allocated by the processing center according to each person's case volume. For example, if an urgent case receives a supplementary notice in May and a reply is submitted at the end of June, the immigration officer hearing the case must shelve other ordinary cases that have not been processed and ensure the final result of this urgent case in mid-July. In this way, the progress of ordinary cases will be interrupted by urgent cases from time to time.

The cancellation of this year's H 1B expedition may not guarantee the release speed of the final results, but it will be more helpful for the Immigration Bureau to arrange the processing progress of various H 1B cases without interference, especially to issue a preliminary handling notice as soon as possible.

Referring to the time when ordinary cases received the acceptance notice and preliminary examination results in previous years, lawyer Meng Xiaojie predicted that this year's H 1B case, the applicants who won the lottery will receive the acceptance notice from the end of April to June and the preliminary examination results (approval or supplementary requirements) from May to July. Applicants who are not selected may receive a refund in June-July.

At the same time, Meng Xiaojie believes that, as in previous years, applicants who request to change their status in the United States, especially those who can apply for Cap Gap, will be given priority, which is higher than those who enter from overseas.