Hire American/Buy American policy used to benefit the government
In a move under the Hire American/Buy American Executive Order touted as aiding US employers, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services in November actually placed an extra burden on US employers sponsoring H-1B professional workers. The only real winner from this change is the US government—not American employers or workers.
The old rule
In the past, employers filed H-1B petitions with filing fees and the USCIS would then randomly select petitions up to the limited quota available. The agency had to deal with more than twice as many petitions as the quota allowed. It took the USCIS three months on average to return unselected petitions and the filing fees paid by employers, at considerable expense to the government.
The new rule
Under the new rule, the USCIS has increased both the fees employers pay and the steps employers must take. Now employers seeking to file H-1B, cap-subject petitions for the 2021 fiscal year will be required to first register and pay a non-refundable $10-per-petition registration fee.
A separate registration must be submitted for each H-1B requested. The registration must be completed between March 1 and March 20, 2020. Petitioners will receive electronic notification that USCIS has accepted the registration for processing. As before, employers are not permitted to submit more than one registration for a single employee in a fiscal year.
The USCIS will then run a random selection process on the registrations received and will notify petitioners whose registrations were selected. The petitioner will then have up to 90 days to file a full petition with supporting documents and all of the usual filing fees.
Dentons insights
Imposing additional fees and procedures on US employers benefits no one but the government.
While employers will find out sooner than under the old rule if an employee’s petition is selected, that is no guarantee the petition will be ultimately granted. To the contrary, the increasingly conservative positions being taken by USCIS adjudicators in evaluating petitions—a process without legislative or regulatory approval—make denial more likely than ever.
And early notice of selection for the lucky few means earlier notice of non-selection for the majority of registrations. That is particularly bad news for most F-1 visa foreign students.
The old rule allowed continued employment of certain F-1 students whose authorization otherwise ended. Known as a “cap-gap extension,” this rule provided that a pending H-1B petition for a foreign student with OPT or STEM OPT ending before September 30 acted to extend employment authorization until September 30 or the date that the employer receives notice that the H-1B petition is not selected, whichever is earlier. Such rejection notices were usually not received until mid-June or later, which benefited many employers and students. Under the new rule, unselected registrations will not enjoy cap-gap benefits and employers will lose more workers sooner.
We also expect that US employers will see even longer USCIS-processing times for selected H-1B petitions.
In the past, the USCIS began processing petitions after the selection process was completed—usually mid-April—yet the agency would still be sending out petition approvals and denials into October. Under the new process, the USCIS says registrations will be selected by the beginning of April and employers will have 90 days to file. With some petitions filed as much as three months later under the new rule, it seems likely employers will sometimes see USCIS processing completed in December, or 90 days later than now.
The government claims this new registration process will dramatically streamline processing by reducing paperwork and data exchange, and will result in an overall cost savings to US employers. In fact, the real beneficiary of the new process is the agency itself.
By limiting the number of petitions eligible to file, the USCIS reduces its own workload. It will not have to deal with sending out rejection notices and returning unselected petition packages. Government efficiency is a good thing, but better without the pretense that the change helps Americans.
US employers will continue to bear the cost of recruiting and making offers to more prospective hires than they will ultimately be allowed to employ. They will still have to pay lawyers to evaluate jobs offered and candidate qualifications to make sure registrations are only done for qualified cases. The fact that some forms will not need to be typed or documents copied will save employers some money, but only on the clerical aspects of the process.
As with any new rule, there are clouds of uncertainty. Employers, candidates and lawyers must be prepared for last-minute process changes. The USCIS already announced that it will soon release more information regarding the new registration. And there is always the possibility that a court decision will ban the implementation of this new process and we will have to revert back to previous practices.
Dentons will continue to monitor this issue. Please contact your Dentons lawyer if you have any questions.
