If your H-1B petition wasn’t selected for FY2021, you may have another shot. On June 23, 2021, USCIS announced that it will allow resubmission of certain cap-subject FY2021 petitions before October 1, 2021.
USCIS stated, “If your FY2021 petition was rejected or administratively closed solely because your petition was based on a registration submitted during the initial registration period but you requested a start day after October 1, 2020, you may re-submit that previously filed petition.”
Other H-1B petitions not selected in the initial FY2022 lottery may also have a second chance if all H-1B visa slots are not filled by petitions selected in the first lottery. This means all eligible applicants have the chance to clean up their petition in time to resubmit.
If your petition from FY2021 is eligible, that means you’ve got some work to do. If the start date was wrong, you need to go over the petition with a keen eye to make sure all answers are accurate and consistent across all documents.
Go back to the original H-1B eligibility requirements, in light of current USCIS approval trends, and make sure your case clearly shows all of these requirements are met. That means the employer can control the work of the H-1B employee at all times – even at third-party worksites – with a complete work itinerary for the duration of the visa. The employee must be making prevailing wages and the factors that went in to setting the wage level must be explained. The job must clearly meet specialty occupation requirements by one or more of the metrics.
If the Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook states that the job does anything but ALWAYS require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree or higher to perform, an expert opinion letter must be included along with a detailed breakdown of the duties and responsibilities of the job to show that specialized skills and knowledge are required.
If the H-1B employee does not hold a US degree in the exact field of the H-1B job, include a detailed credential evaluation written uniquely to fit the situation that fills in any gaps between the education the employee has, and the education the employee needs.
The good news is you don’t have to start from scratch to file. Just be sure that your petition is airtight. At CCI TheDegreePeople.com we work with difficult RFEs every year and keep an eye on USCIS approval trends.
Let us review your case for free before you file. Visit www.ccifree.com and we will respond in 4 hours or less.
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the director of CCI TheDegreePeople.com. Sheila specializes in overturning RFEs and Denials for work visas.