It’s nearly February, and that means the electronic application for H-1B cap-subject submissions is coming right up.  At the same time, the Biden Administration’s Chief of Staff Ronald A. Klain instituted a regulatory freeze through a memorandum.  That means Final Interim Rules restricting the employer-employee relationship and specialty occupation requirements

When USCIS finds one problem with an H-1B RFE, they tend to find more because it triggers a scrutiny of the case.  In recent years, difficult RFEs that raise two or more issues have become more and more common, including the Triple Threat RFE and the classic Nightmare RFE.  These

Expert opinion letters have proven the most effective strategy to prevent and answer specialty occupation and wage level H-1B RFEs.  However, USCIS will not accept just any expert opinion letter as credible.  What goes into the RIGHT expert opinion letter requires the right kind of expert and as much information

Last year, USCIS introduced the electronic filing process where H-1B petitioners file a short, electronic application with basic information about the business and the beneficiaries along with a $10 fee.  If selected, the petitioner would have 90 days to complete and submit the full petition.  This process will continue this

With new rules going into effect that may or may not last until the H-1B cap-subject filing season, it is more important than ever for H-1B applicants to take precautionary measures to prevent RFEs. Over the past few years, we have seen up to three rounds of RFEs before visa

The easiest way to address an education RFE is to avoid one in the first place.  If you are, or if your employee or client is applying for H-1B visa status, here are three circumstances in which an credential evaluation is essential to preempt any education issues on the road

US District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton upheld the STEM OPT program by the Department of Homeland Security in a lawsuit brought against the department by the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers.  This ruling upheld that foreign graduates of accredited US academic institutions with STEM degrees work in the United

Every year, USCIS rolls out more monster RFEs that are impossible to answer by their own guidelines.  This includes the Nightmare RFE that has everything and its mailman in it and the Triple Threat RFE that calls wage level, specialty occupation, and education into question.  What happens when these two

When the number of cap-subject H-1B petitions exceeds the allotted 65,000 annual H-1B visas and additional 20,000 visas for beneficiaries with master’s degrees or higher, USCIS has a randomized lottery to select which petitions will be processed.  Like last year, electronic registration will be the first step, and then those

When USCIS finds one red flag in a petition, that triggers a scrutiny of the entire case which can lead to RFEs that are very difficult to answer.  The Triple Threat RFE can be triggered by wage level specialty occupation, or education issues, and escalates to a monster RFE that