The Donald Trump administration, on Friday, announced a new policy on the H-1B visas which will make the procedure of issuing H-1B visas to those to be employed at one or more third-party worksites tough. The Indian IT companies are among the major beneficiaries of H-1B visas with a significant number of employees deployed at third-party worksites. IT workers from India are always in high demand in American banking, travel and commercial services. The new policy is likely to make life tough for them as the companies will have to go an extra mile to prove that its H-1B employee at a third-party worksite has specific and non-qualifying speculative assignments in a speciality occupation. Here are the 5 criteria that will make it tough for Indians to get H-1B visas:
1. The latest policy memorandum which is a part of President Donald Trump’s ‘Buy American and Hire American Executive Order’ empowers the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to issue H-1B visas to an employee only for the period for which he/she has worked at a third-party worksite.
2. To get an H-1B visa from now on, the petitioner must show by a preponderance of the evidence that the beneficiary will be employed in a speciality occupation and the employer will maintain an employer-employee relationship with the beneficiary for the duration of the requested validity period.
3. The companies will also have to demonstrate that they have specific and non-speculative qualifying assignments in a speciality occupation for that beneficiary for the entire time requested on the petition.
4. According to the new policy, the issuing of H-1B visas could be of less than three years. This will actually reverse the current tradition where the H-1B visas are issued for a period of three years.
5. Companies seeking H-1B visas for their employees working at a third-party site, would now have an intensive paper work to file before submitting their applications. This includes evidence of actual work assignments, which may include technical documentation, milestone tables, marketing analysis, cost-benefit analysis, brochures, and funding documents.
“If an H-1B petitioner is applying to extend H-1B employment for a beneficiary who was placed at one or more third-party worksites during the course of past employment with the same petitioner, that petitioner should also establish that the H-1B requirements have been met for the entire prior approval period,” the USCIS said in its statement.
