LewsLaw Monthly Immigration Newsletter January 2010 Volume 2, Number 1
Little Movement in Employment Based Immigrant Visa Numbers for February 2010
The U.S. State Department released its February 2010 Visa Bulletin: First Preference Employment Visa Numbers remain current as does Second Preference for all countries except China and India. India sees no movement in its Third and Second Preference Visa cut off dates: Third Preference for India remains at June 22, 2001 and Second Preference remains at January 22, 2005. Third Preference for the World moves forward to September 22, 2002 (a seven week gain - the same for China Third). China Second moves forward by three weeks to May 22, 2005. Now that the State Department is aware of the visa numbers needed to adjudicate Adjustment of Status cases pending with USCIS - numbers will move very slowly forward (if at all) - but there should be no retrogression until visa numbers are nearly exhausted in the summer toward the end of the fiscal year.
H-1B Visa Cap Number Calculations
Each year, 6,800 H-1B cap numbers are reserved for Chile/Singapore H-1B1 visas. The unused Chile/Singapore numbers are then rolled over into the next fiscal year’s regular cap. For fiscal year 2009, there were approximately 6,100 unused Chile/Singapore H-1B1s which were added to the 58,200 regular cap numbers available for fiscal year 2010 (excluding the 20,000 master’s exemption), thus the regular H-1B cap was 64,300.
USCIS has historically accepted more H-1B petitions than available cap numbers based on the assumption that some petitions will be denied, rejected or withdrawn. However, this year was different from the previous years as USCIS was able to use actual data on approvals to determine when to end the filing period for the regular cap. USCIS applied approval, denial, withdrawal, etc. rates from the cases that had already been adjudicated to the pending cap subject petitions to estimate how many of the pending petitions may be eligible for a cap number. That number was added to the number of petitions that had already been approved for fiscal year 2010 cap number. When the estimated cap eligible number reached 64,300, USCIS closed the filing period. A lottery of the filings received on December 21, 2009 was run to accept only a portion of filings received on that date.
New Process for Obtaining Prevailing Wage Determinations
As of January 1, 2010, the Department of Labor (DOL) requires centralized filing (Washington, DC) of all Prevailing Wage (PW) Requests for H-1B, H-1B1, H-1C, H-2B, E-3 and Permanent Labor Certifications Programs. Previously, PWs were filed with the various State Workforce Agencies (SWAs) where the job function was to be performed. At this time, all PW Requests mmust be submitted electronically or by mail or comparable physical delivery service to the following address: U.S. Department of Labor - ETA, National Prevailing Wage and Helpdesk Center, Attn.: PWD Request; 1341 G. Street, NW., Suite 201, Washington, DC 20005-3142. DOL advised that mail (or other hard copy delivery) was the only option from January 1 through January 19, 2010 – they did not accept applications by fax or electronic means. To expedite return of the wage determination, if the completed form included an email address for the contact, DOL would email back a scanned copy of the completed wage request. DOL advised that an online prevailing wage system (as part of iCERT) will go live on January 20, 2010. Now that this prevailing wage system is up on iCERT, PW Requests may be completed online and submitted electronically.