Ready Plan B Before H-1B RFE Season Begins
On April 11th, USCIS completed the H-1B lottery. This year, 201,011 H-1B cap subject petitions were filed from April 1st to April 5th. That’s about 11,000 more petitions than last season.
This year, H-1B candidates with advanced degrees of a US Master’s degree or higher had a 16% greater chance of being selected for the lottery because of the advanced degree reversal. In previous years, the 20,000 advanced degree visas were selected before the general lottery, and the remaining petitions were thrown in with the general lottery. This year, the general lottery is selected first which includes candidates with advanced degrees. Those with advanced degrees who were not selected in the general lottery were then pooled into the advanced degree lottery. If you or your employee or client holds an advanced degree or its equivalency, this is an opportunity you don’t want to miss to increase their chance of lottery selection.
Beneficiaries are estimated to find out sometime in June whether they made it or not. Another way to find out if your petition, or if your client or employee’s petition was selected in the lottery is to look at the bank account from which the check for the filing fee was written. If the check has been cashed, it means you or your employee or client was selected in the lottery.
If you or your employee or client is selected in the H-1B lottery, there is a high chance that this selection comes along with an RFE. We have seen a sharp increase in the rate of RFEs over the past few years, and we expect this trend to continue. Along with the rising rate, we have also seen common RFEs become more and more complicated, time-consuming, and expensive to answer. Having a Plan B in place and ready to implement when the answer comes in June is essential to making sure everything is in order for the start of fiscal year 2020 on October 1st.
To formulate a Plan B, you need to understand where red flags or questions could be raised in your client’s case. Three-year bachelor’s degrees, incomplete college or mismatched education, level one wages, and jobs that sometimes don’t require a US bachelor’s degree or higher as a clear industry standard are just a handful of the common problems H-1b beneficiaries have been facing. At TheDegreePeople.com we work with difficult H-1B RFEs every year and we have a good understanding of what tends to trigger them. Let us review your case to help you formulate a Plan B to stay one step ahead this RFE season. For a free review of your case visit HERE. We will get back to you in 48 hours or less.