The H-1B visa that allows US employers to employ foreign professionals in specialty occupation has been made more stringent and stricter than before. This would mean that the Indian IT companies and their employees in the US may have to face certain difficulty post the changes.
The new move was announced on Thursday making it clear that the H-1B visa will now be issued to an employee only for the time period that he/she has to work at a third-party site. This would apparently change the practice of issuing the visa for three years at a time and will also involve more paperwork and other formalities.
As per the reports, now the companies would have to make extra efforts to prove that the H-1B employee at a third-party worksite has specific, non-qualifying speculative assignments in a specialty occupation. The new visa policy introduced on Thursday was announced with immediate effect. Notably, the H-1B visas filing season is yet to start, possibly from April 2 for the fiscal year 2019 beginning from October 1, 2018.
The order says that for the approval of an H-1B petition involving a third party, the petitioner must present a preponderance of the evidence that the beneficiary will be employed in a specialty occupation. Also, the employer will maintain an employer-employee relationship with the beneficiary during the requested validity period.
Although an H-1B petition may be approved for up to 3 years, the USIC in its discretion will generally limit the approval period to the length of the time demonstrated that the beneficiary will be placed in non-speculative work. Throughout this time period, the petitioner will have to maintain the requisite employer-employee bond.
However, a report by Times of India suggests that over the past two years, Indian IT’s dependence on H-1B visas has gone down as these companies have started hiring more locals. Further, since US has a lack of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) workers, these visa policy changes are more likely to affect the American firms that Indian IT companies serve.
