Last week, the Department of State (“DOS”) introduced new questions to the DS-160 and DS-260 visa application forms. All applicants for US visas are now asked to provide details about their social media accounts, including what accounts they’ve held in the last five years and the name used for each account. In the past, this enhanced screening information was only required for applicants identified for extra scrutiny — primarily people who had traveled to areas with a high degree of terrorist activity. [Read more…]
Corstange Law welcomes a new member to the team!
We are excited to welcome Lorenz Wolffers to the Corstange Law Group as Of Counsel. [Read more…]
How will the new rule impact the 2019 lottery process?
As detailed in yesterday’s post, this week DHS announced a plan to institute a pre-registration process for the annual H1B lottery. This means that instead of preparing a complete application prior to entering the lottery as required under the current process, employers would fill out a fairly basic online form and be electronically notified if they’ve been selected in the lottery. If selected, they would then prepare and submit a complete application within 60 days.
This is excellent news for employers and would greatly increase the efficiency of the process! However, we don’t know if it will actually be implemented by April 2019. This leaves expectant applicants with two competing risks to weigh: [Read more…]
Changes to the H1B Lottery Process
On Monday, USCIS announced that it is proposing to change the way the annual H1B lottery is conducted. (For background on how the process has worked up to this point, please see my older post here.) Here’s a breakdown of the new process:
Is wage level 1 allowed for H1Bs?
The short answer is yes, but it should be used very carefully, and only for certain job categories.
The Department of Labor has assigned four different “wage levels” to various categories of jobs in order to give you an idea of what similar jobs typically pay at the entry-level and at more advanced levels. In 2017, USCIS suddenly began issuing an overwhelming number of RFEs implying that positions paid at wage level 1 could never qualify for an H1B. These RFEs claimed that wage level 1 jobs are only for “beginning-level” employees who need supervision, and could therefore not possibly require a specialized bachelor’s degree for entry as required for an H1B. [Read more…]
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