Dive brief:
- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security last week issued a final rule that changes how U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services select H-1B visa program registrants against the agency’s annual limit.
- Under the rule, DHS will implement a “beneficiary-centric” selection process whereby the agency selects H-1B registrations by single beneficiary rather than by record. Each beneficiary will enter the process once, regardless of the number of entries submitted. Movement is an effort reduce the potential for fraudsaid Ur M. Jaddou, director of USCIS, in a Jan. 30 news release.
- Other provisions of the rule include flexibility of the start date for some H-1B petitions with a cap and changes to the registration process, such as requiring a valid passport or valid travel document information. The rule takes effect on March 4, 2024, two days before the opening of the initial registration period for FY 2025 H-1B cap petitions.
Diving knowledge:
The provisions in the final rule are part of what DHS includes Proposed October 2023 rule. In that document, for example, the agency said it would modify the definition of “skilled occupation” in the context of the H-1B program, but that is not addressed in the final rule.
In its press release, DHS said it “intends to issue a separate final rule to address the remaining provisions contained in the [proposed rule].”
However, the latest rule addresses a contentious issue for stakeholders in the H-1B process. Throughout 2023, DHS signaled its intent to address criticism some employers sought an unfair advantage submitting multiple records for identical visa applicants. The agency said last year that of about 758,000 eligible records in fiscal year 2024, more than 408,000 included workers with multiple eligible records.
In public comments, organizations including the Society for Human Resource Management said: support for changing the selection process.
“This measure promises to correct the abuses of the boundary selection process that have resulted in considerable injustice to many employers who followed the rules of the process and were honest in their responses to the petition forms and yet may not had selected a request through the limit selection process,” SHRM wrote in a Dec. 19 public comment.
