The new H-1B season is upon us.
Consistent with our recommendations in previous years, our office strongly suggests that employers file new H-1B petitions (for authorized H-1B employment that will commence on October 1, 2017) on April 1, 2017 or as close to April 1, 2017 as possible.
This recommendation applies to petitions you will be filing for new hires, including but not limited to, those who are recent university graduates from U.S. academic institutions who may or may not currently have temporary OPT work authorization.
You may remember that for the last several years, there have been many more petitions than H-1B visa numbers allotted by the government and even for many of those who filed the first week of April, they did not receive an H-1B number unless they were selected in the H-1B lottery.
Regardless of this uncertainty, if you are interested in sponsoring someone, it is very important that we file these H-1B petitions the first week of April 2017 to ensure that these petitions are eligible for the likely H-1B lottery.
Those applicants who did not get selected in the previous years H-1B lottery may now reapply for another chance at an H-1B visa number.
Please note that this urgency regarding the April 1 filing date does not apply to those employers or prospective employees, who are exempt from the cap, such as foreign nationals who already possess H-1B visa status, or for a foreign national who has had prior H-1B status prior and did not exhaust their full six (6) years of eligibility, or those sponsored by cap exempt organizations.