H-1B Updates Summer 2020

[AndhraFriend305]

 

It has become a trend for USCIS to issue H-1B approvals for 1 year for IT companies. In some cases, H-1B approvals have been issued for few months or few days.

USCIS recently lost a case filed by an IT consulting company union. Initially USCIS decided to appeal this case to a higher federal court. Then USCIS decided to settle with the IT consulting company union. There are many aspects to this case, but the major victory is regarding H-1B approvals for less than 3 years.

If USCIS reduces the validity of an initial H-1B petition or H-1B extension for less than 3 years than USCIS must clearly state the reason why they are approving the petition for less than 3 years.

Department of Labor increases wages between $4,000 to $10,000 on July 1st of every year. On July 1st H-1B salaries for most metropolitan cities will reach between 90k to 100k for the most used H-1B job title Software Developer. Tier 1 cities like Dallas will become 100k or over and tier 2 cities like Columbus will reach 90k per year.

There is a rumor that a presidential executive order will be issued to increase H-1B prices by 150-230k or level 4 wages. However presidential executive orders are being stopped by temporary injunction (stay order) by federal judges within a week.

Hence H-1B employees need not worry about these one-page executive order memos which will be immediately squashed by a federal judge. The power of a president is limited in United States due to checks and balances system in United States.

Many US consulates are shut down due to Coronavirus. 10-15% of employment-based green cards are issued by US consulates as immigrant visas. The employment-based green cards do not have a long wait time especially for countries other than India and China in the EB2 category.

Hence employers tend to hire employees directly through the EB2 green card category instead of filing H-1B and later sponsoring a green card for the immigrant employee. Immigrant employee doctors, nurses, scientists, and few non-IT engineers are mostly hired by this process bypassing the H-1B category.

The priority date would have moved to 2010 June by now if USCIS was still trying to conduct interviews for employment-based green cards. Without much fanfare USCIS decided to waive interviews for employment-based green cards.

Hence priority dates for India are not moving in the EB2 India category. By September 2020 visa bulletin there is a chance that EB2 India will move to June 2010.

This is a sponsored article. We are currently hiring for .Net, Java, Python, Ruby on Rails, Middleware, BA, and QA positions. Please send your resume to [email protected] if you are interested in this opportunity.

If you are laid from your current job or a layoff is imminent and need h1b sponsorship, please email your resume to [email protected].