It’s March 3, Do You Know Where Your H-1Bs Are?

Beginning April 1, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting FY 2009 H-1B petitions for H-1B employment starting October 1. It is expected that USCIS will receive enough petitions in the first two days to necessitate a lottery to determine which petitions will be accepted for processing. The 20,000 exemptions for holders of master’s or higher degrees from a United States institution of higher education is also expected to be exhausted quickly. In anticipation of this, we strongly recommend that all H-1B petitions subject to the 2009 cap be sent to the relevant USCIS Service Center by overnight mail on Monday, March 31. Please note that all H-1B petitions subject to the 2009 cap received by USCIS before April 1, will be rejected.

If you have not considered whether your employees or potential employees will need H-1B petitions filed on their behalf, you should:

• Contact recruiters to determine if any foreign nationals in "F-1 student" status have been issued offers of employment and whether they will need H-1Bs;
• Contact managers to determine whether there are any employees who are currently working pursuant to practical training and will need H-1Bs;
• Determine whether there are any foreign national employees working in another nonimmigrant status who will be ineligible for continued employment authorization after October 1; and
• Determine whether there are any candidates abroad under consideration for transfer to the United States who are ineligible for another type of work-authorized status in this country.

How This Affects You

It is imperative that all employers who wish to file cap-subject H-1B petitions contact us immediately so that we may start preparing these petitions as soon as possible.

Morgan Lewis will continue to monitor the H-1B cap situation and will update you with any new information. If you have any questions about any of the issues raised in this Morgan Lewis Immigration Alert, please contact:

San Francisco
A. James Vázquez-Azpiri
415.442.1343
ajvazquez@morganlewis.com

Lance Nagel
415.442.1345
lnagel@morganlewis.com

Washington, D.C.
Eleanor Pelta
202.739.5050
epelta@morganlewis.com

Eric S. Bord
202.739.6040
ebord@morganlewis.com

About Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Morgan Lewis is a global law firm with more than 1,400 lawyers in 22 offices located in Beijing, Boston, Brussels, Chicago, Dallas, Frankfurt, Harrisburg, Houston, Irvine, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Palo Alto, Paris, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Princeton, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. For more information about Morgan Lewis or its practices, please visit us online at www.morganlewis.com.