The Trump administration has announced a new policy that tightens the procedure of issuing H-1B visas to those to be employed at one or more third-party work-sites, a move that will significantly impact Indian information technology companies and their employees.
Under the new policy, the company would have to go an extra length to prove that its H-1B employee at a third-party worksite has specific and non-qualifying speculative assignments in a speciality occupation.
The H-1B programme offers temporary U.S. visas that allow companies to hire highly-skilled foreign professionals, working in areas with shortages of qualified American workers.
As such the issuing of H-1B visas could be of less than three years. This would reverse the tradition of issuing the H-1B visas for three years at a time.
Effective immediately, the new guidance comes weeks ahead of the beginning of the H-1B visas filing season, which is expected to be April 2nd, for the fiscal year 2019 beginning October 1, 2018.
Companies seeking H-1B visas for their employees working at a third-party site, would now have an intensive paper work to file before submitting their applications.
This includes evidence of actual work assignments, which may include technical documentation, milestone tables, marketing analysis, cost-benefit analysis, brochures, and funding documents.