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Home > News > World News > Article > Trump admin makes H1 B visa approvals tougher

Trump admin makes H1-B visa approvals tougher

Updated on: 24 February,2018 08:20 AM IST  |  Washington
Agencies |

The new policy would have a huge impact on Indian IT firms and employees

Trump admin makes H1-B visa approvals tougher

Representation pic
Representation pic


The Trump administration has announced a new policy that makes very tough the procedure of issuing H-1B visas to those to be employed at one or more third-party worksites, a move that will hugely impact Indian IT companies and employees.


Under the new policy, a company would 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 speciality occupation. The H-1B programme offers temporary US visas that allow firms to hire highly skilled foreign professionals working in areas with shortages of qualified American workers.


Indian IT companies, which are among the major beneficiaries of H-1B visas, has a significant number of its employees deployed at third-party worksites. A significant number of American banking, travel and commercial services depend on on-site IT workers from India to get their job done.

The new move announced on Thursday through a seven-page policy 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 work at a third-party worksite. The latest policy memorandum is a part of President Donald Trump’s ‘Buy American and Hire American Executive Order’, USCIS said.

As such the issuing of H-1B visas could be of less than three years. This would reverse the tradition of issuing the H-1B visas for three years at a time. Effective immediately, the new guidance comes weeks ahead of the beginning of the H-1B visas filing season, which is expected to be April 2, for the fiscal year 2019 beginning October 1, 2018.

The guidance says in order for an H-1B petition involving a third-party worksite to be approved, the petitioner must show by a preponderance of 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.

April 2
The day when the H-1B visa filing season will begin

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