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As a reminder to all U.S. employers, H-1B season is almost here! United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (“USCIS”) will start accepting new H-1B petitions for fiscal year 2017 on Friday, April 1, 2016. As such, employers should start immediately identifying current and future employees who will require sponsorship for new H-1B petitions. Continue reading “Planning Ahead: H-1Bs for FY2017”
To obtain an H-1B visa, a petitioner must establish that it will have an employment relationship with the beneficiary. While this seems like a very simple and easy enough thing to do, the problem is that in an employment relationship things are not always black and white. Continue reading “Navigating H-1B Requirements: The Existence of a Valid Employer-Employee Relationship”
Quite often employers ask, “If it doesn’t work out, can we recover all the money we have spent on the H-1B process from the employee?” The short is answer to this repeatedly asked question is no. Department of Labor (DOL) regulations are clear that the employer must pay the filing fees and may not allow the worker to pay it directly, by deduction from wages or in any other fashion. DOL regulations say that the H-1B costs and fees are employer business expenses and exclude those fees and costs from the list of “authorized deductions.” (Read more about deductions for an H-1B worker’s pay.) Continue reading “A Cautionary Tale for H-1B Employers”