Sari Long, Kirat K. Goraya, Author at Laborsphere

USCIS Announces H-1B Cap Has Been Reached for Fiscal Year 2025

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has received enough petitions to meet the annual numerical allocation of 85,000 H-1B visas for fiscal year 2025, which includes 65,000 regular and 20,000 U.S. advanced-degree cap petitions. The FY 2025 registration process was the first under USCIS’s new beneficiary-centric process, in which registrations were selected by unique beneficiary rather than by number of submitted registrations.

To view the full alert, visit the Faegre Drinker website.

USCIS Announces H-1B Cap Has Been Reached for Fiscal Year 2024

On December 13, 2023, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it had received enough petitions to meet the annual numerical allocation of 85,000 H-1B visas for fiscal year 2024 (FY2024), which includes 65,000 regular and 20,000 U.S. advanced degree (U.S. master’s degree) cap petitions. The next period during which registrants will be allowed to submit H-1B cap registrations is expected to be in the first couple of weeks of March 2024 for an October 1, 2024, (FY2025) employment start date for successful registrants.

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What Employers Need to Know About the New Form I-9 as of August 1, 2023: Big Changes on the Horizon

Changes are coming for employers – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is set to publish a new Form I-9 on August 1, 2023. USCIS has also introduced new procedures that will allow certain employers to remotely verify employees’ identification and employment authorization documents.

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DOJ Settles Discrimination Claims with Employers Using Campus Recruiting Services

In May, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that 10 employers have settled claims that they violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) by posting discriminatory job advertisements on a college recruiting platform. These actions have cost individual employers over $300,000 and serve as a warning to make sure that online job boards are compliant with the INA before posting to them.

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Florida Extends E-Verify Requirement to Private Employers

The Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify program is a free web-based verification tool for employers to confirm newly hired employees’ work authorization in the United States. Although participation in E-Verify is generally voluntary for employers, some states require employers to use E-Verify in certain contexts. Florida is the most recent state to update its E-Verify laws with Gov. Ron DeSantis signing Senate Bill 1718 on May 10, 2023.

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USCIS Announces Expansion of Premium Processing

While U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) made clear that it would not be increasing the $2,500 premium processing fee in its latest round of proposed fee increases, the agency announced on January 12 its final phase of premium processing expansion for EB-1 and EB-2 Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers.

Beginning January 30, 2023, USCIS will accept Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service for all EB-1 multinational executive and manager petitions and all EB-2 national interest waiver (NIW) petitions. Notably, unlike previous phases of premium processing expansion, this phase applies to all petitions, both new (initial) and previously filed (pending) under the EB-1 multinational executive and manager petitions and all EB-2 NIW categories.

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