A US federal agency announced that the H-1B visa application submission process for the fiscal year 2025 would begin on March 6, which will see a significant redesign of the annual lottery for this speciality occupation visa.
Agencies highlighted that non-immigrant visas such as the H-1B permit US employers to hire foreign nationals for specialised jobs requiring advanced technical or theoretical training. Tens of thousands of workers from China and India are hired by technology companies every year thanks to it.
One feature of the new system is that employers can register their employees through a beneficiary-centric selection process. Consequently, the H-1B visa applications would now be counted and approved based on individual applicants, as opposed to the past practice of multiple applications by a single person, which frequently led to abuse of the system.
Based on their personal information, such as passport numbers, an individual’s applications for different companies would all be counted as one application, even if they are filed by the same person, reports added.
A new set of regulations was also announced by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), with the goal of enhancing the legitimacy of the H-1B registration procedure and lowering the possibility of fraud. According to the federal agency, this entails lowering the possibility of systemic manipulation and guaranteeing that every beneficiary has an equal chance of being chosen, irrespective of the quantity of registrations filed on their behalf.
“We’re always looking for ways to bolster integrity and curtail the potential for fraud while improving and streamlining our application processes,” USCIS Director Ur M Jaddou told agencies.
“The improvements in these areas should make H-1B selections more equitable for petitioners and beneficiaries and will allow for the H-1B process to be fully electronic from registration, if applicable, until final decision and transmission of approved petitions to the Department of State.”
He added that the initial fiscal 2025 H-1B cap registration period will begin on March 6 at noon Eastern time and end on March 22. During this time, potential petitioners and, if necessary, their representatives, must electronically register each beneficiary for the selection process through a USCIS online account and pay the beneficiary’s registration fee.
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