hey all i'm Apurva and welcome back to WeDesified uscis recently on january 28
announced that initial registrations for h1b cap will be started from march 1st
this marks the beginning of h1b season for financial year 2023 and there are some big updates
regarding the lottery this year interview process and h1b salaries in this video we will talk about
all of those and as an applicant all the things you should be doing to get your petition approved
so if you're interested to apply for h1b visa this year or in the near future
then you should definitely watch this video to understand it in detail but before that if you
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in our previous videos we discuss about the h-1b visa and its eligibility and how the h-1b lottery
works and the process starting from filing the petition till you get it approved if you haven't
watched them yet then you should go and watch them first and come back to this video so if you're
still watching this video i will assume that you know what h1b visa is and its process so i'm not
going to go into the details again in the notice uscis announced that the registration period for
h1b cap for this year starts on march 1st and ends on march 18th so if you're watching this
before that period and your h1b registration is not yet done then you should talk to your employer
immediately if you pass that march 18 deadline then you will have to wait until next year
good thing is that this is not on first come first serve basis so either you do your registration on
march 1st or on march 18th you will have the same chance in the lottery and the registration costs
just 10 dollars and literally takes two minutes to complete so convince your employer and join
the lottery because if you are a student on opt or stem opt you only have three chances so every
chance counts if you have a master's degree or a phd degree from us make sure that they indicate
that in your registration some of our friends who are working in the startups and their hr
didn't know about this advanced degree quota and so they did the registrations as regular h1b quota
and that's how they miss the second chance so make sure you don't make the same mistake
once the registration is completed you will have to wait until the results are announced
now whoever filed the registration only they can see the lottery status so you will have
to follow up with your employer to know your status uscis said that the results will be
announced by 31st march but the last couple of years we have seen that the state is getting
changed by a couple of days earlier too by 29th or 30th march also so keep a close eye on that
while you wait for the results to come out you can start collecting and preparing the
documents so that your employer can file your petition starting april 1st as soon as possible
because faster you file the petition the faster you will hear from uscis
this is the snippet of the list of documents you have to send from your end
the employers have 90 days starting april 1st to file your petition once uscis receives
your petition they will send a receipt to your employer you can request your employer to share
that receipt with you verify all the information mentioned on the receipt as accurate and note
the receipt number because with this receipt number you can track your case status online
uscis usually takes around two and a half to three months for the decision so by july or august you
would get to know but if in case it is taking more time and you want to expedite the process
then you can pay around two thousand five hundred dollars extra to do the premium processing
with premium processing they usually give the decision within two weeks
if your petition is approved then you will get an approval notice within one to two weeks from uscis
if your petition is denied then you will again get the notice stating the denial reason and you
will have to wait until next year to reapply in some cases you can reach out to uscis or file a
code case challenging the decision if that's the case your attorneys will give you the best advice
but many times if uscis is not satisfied with your petition then they request for more evidence which
is also called as rfe we talked briefly about rfes in our previous video so watch that for more
information so let's talk about the big updates for this year the first one is
about the number of lotteries usually uscis conducts only one lottery in march april months
but in 2020 they conducted a second lottery in august since the 85 000 quota was not full
in 2021 they did a second lottery in august and a third lottery in november in addition to the
first lottery in march so will there be a fourth lottery in 2022 well in terms of the timeline
it looks unlikely since there is hardly any time between november and next year's lottery in march
but since the effects of the pandemic are reducing uh uscis and embassies might come back to working
at full capacity and if they reduce the processing times between these lotteries then there might be
a fourth round as well you never know the next update is about the wage level based system to
replace the lottery system trump administration introduced this rule to rank employees based on
their salaries according to their job role and location and based on their rankings they will
be eligible for the h-1b visa instead of the random lottery if this rule was implemented
it would have helped only those big companies that could pay their employees huge salaries
the startups or the companies with mid-level budgets cannot afford h1b visas
but the great news is that uscis lost the court case and withdrew this rule on 21st december 2021
which means this wage level system won't be implemented and the lottery system will continue
next important update is about the interview waiver usually for new h1b visa stampings you
need to attend an in-person interview but due to the pandemic unavailability of the
visa slots and huge backlogs biden's government announced an interview waiver for certain visas
so if you're applying for a new h-1b visa and you were issued any type of us visa before like
a student visa or even a visitor's visa your interview may be waived this waiver is provided
until the end of 2022 so this year's h1bs are also covered you can get your stamping done just with
the dropbox but recently we are seeing some 221g refusals on the interview waivers these are just
soft refusals for the waiver which means that after reviewing your documents the consulate
wants you to come for an interview this is a usual process so there is no need to worry much
trump government proposed around 40 percent increase in the h1b minimum salaries which means
only high paying big tech companies can afford the h1b employees this rule was removed but biden's
government is planning to increase the minimum salary by 10 to 15 percent and proposing changes
to the employee employer relations and contract workers these changes are planned for the may 2022
so it might not affect this year's h-1b cap but there could be big updates for the next year
or even the subsequent lotteries this year after hearing all these roadblocks and hurdles i am sure
you all realized how tough the h1b journey is and maybe even feeling little demotivated
but if you see the latest news according to the nfap data this year there are around 1.2 million
job vacancies in the us in just computer occupations alone there might be many more
vacancies in other occupations and us only gives 85 000 h1b visas which means there are millions
of more jobs to be filled in the u.s and u.s population growth rate is also decreasing year
by year which may give hope for more immigration so hang tight and do the best for today
so that's all we have for this video hope you got a better idea about the h1b visa situation
if you haven't watched our previous videos then go check them out now
if you find this video useful then please like and share it and if you have any questions then
you can ask us in the comment section below we will reply and make more videos answering
all your questions see you in the next video until then keep learning bye you