Proposed registration before filing the H-1B

The Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) is proposing a registration process before filing the actual petition for new cap subject H-1Bs. The registration will apparently take 30 minutes, and the CIS will preview the application and then give the employer the go ahead to file.

If by April 01, more than 65 K applications are reached, the the CIS will do a lottery and let lucky ones know. The rest will be kept on a wait list, and may get in if the numbers become available. If the numbers are not reached on the first day, the CIS will keep the registration open until the cap is reached.

This will hopefully be a simpler process, and cut down the amount of work, and thus the cost of having an H-1B petiton filed.

However, what we dont know is HOW LONG the CIS will take to review the registration and give the go ahead. Also not known is how much bureaucratic mess we will go through. The Department of Labor's LCA fiasco with their "inability to match FEIN numbers" come to mind. So if numbers are still available after October 01, of a given year, and an employer wants an urgent approval, she will still have to deal with first the CIS registration, and then the LCA process before she can file. Thus the purpose for which Premium processing was created so that the Employers can get somebody at the pace of the 21st Century, will become meaningless.

Also not known is how extensive this registration process will be. If the CIS needs to adjudicate substantive issues of the law, then the registration itself will be as long as the petition. Thus this whole process will be a complete waste of time and money for everyone.

The Comment period is until May 02, 2011. So this registration process will not be for Fiscal Year 2012.

For more information contact Houston Immigration Lawyer or Houston Immigration Attorney, Annie Banerjee