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30In good news for India’s techies, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has decided to conduct a second round of lottery for issuing H-1B visas for the year. This is being done because the number of H-1B visas issued after the first round was below the Congressional mandated annual cap of 85,000 visas.
“We recently determined that we needed to select additional registrations to reach the fiscal year 2022 numerical allocations,” the USCIS said in a statement.
Poorvi Chothani, founder and managing partner of global immigration law firm LawQuest, told BusinessLine that this was the second consecutive year when a second round of lottery was being conducted. “Additional selections will be only for enough registrations to meet the annual cap. This is a welcome development for our clients who need qualified talent in the US to meet their anticipated work projections.”
“The USCIS has not indicated how many registrations it has selected in the second round. However, it said it had received more than 303,000 registrations in March. Petitioners saw a selection rate of about 25 per cent, for the FY-2022 cap, which is much lower than in past years,” Chothani said.
Application process
“The petition filing period based on registrations selected on July 28 will begin on August 2 and close on November 3.
“Individuals with selected registrations will have their myUSCIS accounts updated to include a selection notice, which includes details of when and where to file,” USCIS said.
Even the selected registrations from the first round will get an extension to apply for the visa, USCIS said. The initial filing period for those with selected registrations for FY2022 was from April 1, 2021 through June 30.
However, online filing will not be available for the H-1B petitioners.
Cap-subject petition
The USCIS added that an H-1B cap-subject petition must be properly filed at the correct service centre and within the filing period indicated on the relevant registration selection notice.
The petitions will be filed on paper and should include a printed copy of the applicable registration selection notice with the FY2022 H-1B cap-subject petition.
“The petition filing period based on registrations selected on July 28 will begin on August 2 and close on November 3.”
Also read: US Immigration allows resubmission of rejected H-1B applications
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