The Trump administration has just made the H-1B visa-approval process even harder
What everyone was expecting is about to happen. Better forget about H1B
“When H-1B beneficiaries are placed at third-party worksites, petitioners must demonstrate that they have specific and non-speculative qualifying assignments in a specialty occupation for that beneficiary for the entire time requested on the petition,” the USCIS said in a press release about the new policy memorandum (pdf) it issued on Feb. 22 to guide its officers.
So far, to approve the visa, the adjudicating officers did not have to review third-party contracts or the exact dates and place of third-party work.
Significantly, the move comes just over a month before the H-1B filing for fiscal 2019 opens on April 02.
“The USCIS is broadly telling its officers that they must look at certain elements of an H-1B petition, which earlier was enforced at their discretion,” Poorvi Chothani, managing partner at immigration law firm LawQuest, told Quartz. “USCIS’s scrutiny of H-1B petitions has been stringent in recent times and it is going to be more stringent now.”
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