What is an H-1B Visa? | H1B procedure - EVC Mode
What is an H-1B Visa?
An H-1B visa is the most common way for employers to sponsor professional workers in the U.S. In order to qualify for this sponsorship, the employee must hold a position that requires at least a bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in that field. Once obtained, an H-1B visa allows its bearer to stay and work in the U.S. legally for up to three years. After those three years, the visa can be renewed for up to six total years.
How to Petition for an H-1B Visa?
From an employer perspective, H-1B eligibility is much more complex. The employer must file the petition for the visa on behalf of the employee, who is not allowed to self-petition. Every company, regardless of size or age, must petition for one of the 65,000 H-1B visas that are made available every April 1st by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Note that 6,800 of those visas are set aside, per trade agreements, for immigrants from Singapore and Chile. An additional 20,000 H-1B visas are made available for workers with advanced degrees, meaning a master’s degree or above. Usually, more applications are filed than visas are available within the first week of April, meaning that the fate of the employee’s visa rests in the hands of an annual lottery.
In this page, I will give you the overview of H1B sponsorship in EVC (Employer-Vendor-Client) and EC (Employer - Client) mode.
Most of the H1B sponsoring companies have their in house projects obtained from their clients. When they require consultants from outside US or the consultants available within US to fulfill their requirements, usually employers will file H1B to that consultant.
In EVC and EC mode, sometimes, employer (who files H1B) has no direct relation with the end client, so they approach the client through a vendor or implementing partner to the client.
H1B Sponsoring step wise:
Step 1: Employer need your basic information along with your updated resume and passport copy. (Without this information they will not reply your queries)
Step 2: Technical interview with the HR team and once you cleared the interview; they will proceed with the paperwork.
Step 3: If you get selected in the interview, employer will contact you with required documents list. You need to fill the checklist information and send the filled checklist with all the documents mentioned in the checklist.
Step 4: Employer will review the documents and reply with the decision of acceptance or rejection.
Step 5: Employer will submit all your documents along with client’s offer letter to the attorney for paperwork processing, background checking and attestation. Attorney will review your documents and may do background verification for all the documents.
Step 6: If accepted, now employer will file an LCA with USCIS along with your details and the project details that you are going to work.
Step 7: Once the employer get the LCA approval, they will file H1B on or after April 1st of the calendar year.
Step 8: Employer will get the file number in 4 – 6 weeks after the H1B filing (as per USCIS website)
Step 9: Wait for the update in USCIS website, if gets approved then you can start working from October 1st of the calendar year.
