The period of filing the new H-1B petitions for the next fiscal year 2017 will start from 1st April 2016. The H-1B petitions which are subject to limit will have employment starting date of 1st October, 2016 or later.
To prepare for the start of the fiscal year 2017 period of H-1B filing, the employers are strongly motivated to start identify the current and future employees who require H-1B visa status for getting employed legally in the US.
Individuals who are holding F-1 student visa or J-1 trainee visa, individuals who seek changing to H-1B status from other status of visa like TN, L-1,E-3 or L-1) and the individuals who reside outside of the US commonly required a limit subject H-1B petition filed on behalf of them.
H-1B program gives permission to the employers for employing the overseas workers in occupations of specialty that requires high specialized knowledge, such as scientists, engineers and programmers.
The federal law restricts the total number of new H-1B visas available every year to 65,000. In addition to these H-1B visas that are made available under regular limit, extra 20,000 H-1B visas are available for those who had got an advance degree from a US institution at filing time.
If the USCIS receive more limit subject H-1B petitions than its limitation, then it will conduct a lottery random selection process that is computer generated. The limited lottery will be held for those who possess advance degree from any US institution. And any H-1B petition for the beneficiary who possess advance degree didn’t got selected in advance degree limit lottery would be incorporated in the second lottery for regular H-1B limit.
All the H-1B petitions are not subject to the limitation of the fiscal year, there are H-1B petitions which are exempted from the annual limit for H-1B. The first one would be the H-1B petitions which are filed for extending or amending the H-1B employment for overseas workers who already in the status of H-1B. And those petitions filed on new workers behalf that are employed in the status of the H-1B. by the higher education institutions, organizations related to the government research, organizations for nonprofit research.
It is practical that the employers mail all limit subject H-1B petitions on 31st March 2016, for deliverance to the USCIS on 1st April 2016. The employers should take the action at the earliest for initiating any limit subject H-1B petitions.
