H1B visas to return as workload permit, says US immigration agency

Bengaluru: In a move that heralds at least temporary good news for Indians seeking H1B visas, the US Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) is planning to resume premium processing of H1B visas as ‘workloads’ permit.

After US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on H1B visas, the USCIS had announced in March that it would suspend the fast-processing of H1B visas. This move shook the Indian IT giants who would have to wait for a longer time to send their employees onsite for projects.

"USCIS plans to resume premium processing of other H-1B petitions as workloads permit. We will make additional announcements with specific details related to when we will begin accepting premium processing for those petitions," the agency said in a statement reported by Economic Times. The agency started premium processing of all H1B visa requests for doctors under a waiver program and for government agency waivers.

The UCSIS had earlier said its suspension could last up to six months. It had said the suspension would help the agency to process previous pending petitions and” prioritise adjudication of H-1B extension of status cases that are nearing the 240 day mark”.

Premium processing of visas refers to processing of applications within 15 days for USD 1,225 per application.

Ever since the March announcement and Trump’s stance to make ‘America First’, Indian IT companies have gone on a massive recruitment drive in the US. Wipro hired over 3,000 people in 2017, Cognizant hired over 4,000 in 2016 and Infosys declared it will hire 10,000 people in the US over the course of the next two years, reported Economic Times.