U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received enough petitions to reach the additional maximum 30,000 visas made available for returning workers under the H-2B numerical limit (also called a cap) for fiscal year 2019.<\/p>\n
As\u00a0previously announced, USCIS began accepting H-2B petitions on May 8 under the temporary final rule increasing the cap by up to 30,000 additional H-2B nonimmigrant visas for returning workers through the end of FY 2019.<\/p>\n
USCIS will reject and return any cap-subject petitions received after June 5, together with any accompanying filing fees.<\/p>\n
USCIS will continue to accept H-2B petitions that are exempt from the congressionally mandated cap. This includes petitions for:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Current H-2B workers in the United States petitioning to extend their stay and, if applicable, change the terms of their employment or change their employers;
\n\u2022 Fish roe processors, fish roe technicians, and\/or supervisors of fish roe processing; and
\n\u2022 Workers performing labor or services in the CNMI and\/or Guam from Nov. 28, 2009, until Dec. 31, 2029.<\/p>\n
Premium processing<\/strong> On March 19,\u00a0USCIS announced\u00a0that it would offer\u00a0premium processing in a two-phased approach during the FY 2020 cap season to best manage premium processing requests without fully suspending it.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the past few years, USCIS suspended all premium processing for H-1B petitions due to high demand. Based on feedback from the public, it is using this phased approach to benefit petitioners and ensure efficient premium processing. <\/p>\n The first phase, which\u00a0started on May 20, included FY 2020 cap-subject H-1B petitions requesting a change of status and the second phase includes all other FY 2020 cap-subject petitions.<\/p>\n At this time, premium processing for H-1B petitions that are exempt from the cap, such as extension of stay requests, remains available.\u00a0<\/p>\n Prepaid mailer temporary suspension<\/strong> The process for printing approval notices and sending them by regular mail is fully automated. As such, and given the initial surge of premium processing requests for H-1B cap petitions and its impact on USCIS resources, using prepaid mailers may actually delay the issuance of an approval notice. After the two-week period, we intend to resume sending out final notices in prepaid mailers provided by petitioners, when operationally feasible. (USCIS)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received enough petitions to reach the additional maximum 30,000…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[508],"class_list":["post-301280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-fy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOn June 10, USCIS began premium processing for all remaining FY 2020 H-1B cap-subject petitions. Starting on that date, petitioners may file\u00a0Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service, with the USCIS service center that is processing their petition.<\/p>\n
\nStarting on June 10 and continuing through the end of June 24, USCIS will not use prepaid mailers to send out final notices for premium processing for FY 2020 cap-subject H-1B petitions not requesting a change of status. Instead, it will use regular mail. We will be doing this due to resource limitations as we work to process all premium processing petitions in a timely manner.<\/p>\n