H-1B Cap Season is quickly approaching. Registration for this year’s lottery will open in March 2024. If you are interested in sponsoring your employee(s) in this year’s lottery, please contact SKO to have their case reviewed for eligibility.
What is THE H-1B STATUS?
H-1B is a widely used professional work visa available to noncitizens for employment in the U.S. H-1B requires employer sponsorship. The employment must be in a specialty occupation that requires a bachelor’s degree or higher level of education to enter the field in the U.S. Examples of fields for which H-1B is appropriate include computer science, engineering, chemistry, quantitative data analysis and certain financial fields.
What is THE H-1B CAP?
Each year there is a limit of 65,000 H-1B’s for bachelor’s degree cases with an additional 20,000 for persons with U.S. master’s degrees or higher. Since more individuals seek H-1B’s than there are numbers available, H-1B’s are allocated through a lottery system. Registration for the lottery will open in March 2024.
Some types of employment are exempt from the lottery system, including jobs at institutions of higher learning, research organizations, and some physicians.
WHO SHOULD APPLY?
If you wish to employ or continue to employ a noncitizen for a professional position and they have never been in H-1B status before, we recommend contacting SKO as soon as possible so we can review their case for potential H-1B status.
We strongly recommend considering foreign nationals who are currently employed on F-1 OPT or STEM OPT (work status obtained following graduation from an institution of higher learning), as they have a limited number of chances to be selected in the lottery.
WHAT IS THE PROCESS?
*Note: USCIS has proposed changes to the H-1B Registration to implement this year. At this time, they have not announced what changes they will implement and how they will impact the process. We will be keeping an eye out for updates and inform employers and employees if there are changes that will impact the process.
QUESTIONS?
Please contact a member of the SKO Immigration Team:
- Charles Baesler (charles.baesler@skofirm.com)
- Jamila Carter (jamila.carter@skofirm.com)
- Lisa Lui (lisa.lui@skofirm.com)
- Heather Wages (heather.wages@skofirm.com)