US Immigration allows resubmission of rejected H-1B applications

Following a slew of changes, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Wednesday said that it will allow resubmission of FY21 applications for H-1B visa for those applicants who had been rejected or administratively closed just because the requested start date was after October 1, 2020.

“If your FY21 petition was rejected or administratively closed solely because your petition was based on a registration submitted during the initial registration period, but you requested a start date after October 1, 2020, you may re-submit that previously filed petition, with all applicable fees,” USCIS said, adding, “such petitions must be re-submitted before October 1. If properly resubmitted, we will consider the petition to have been filed on the original receipt date.” H-1B visa allows US companies to employ foreign workers in technical fields requiring specialisation. Nearly 70 per cent of the total H-1B visas given out annually go to Indian IT professionals.

Sonam Chandwani, managing partner, KS Legal & Associates told

BusinessLine, “Just like other countries, the US economy was affected badly due to Covid. Having the highest number of IT companies across the world, they would want to attract Indian talent. After what happened during the Trump era, they don’t want to sever ties with India any more. If the US won’t give job opportunities, the Indian professionals would naturally look at other countries. That’s why they are relaxing these regulations. Since president Biden has resumed office, he has been looking for a course correction to what Trump had done earlier.” .

In 2020, USCIS implemented an electronic registration process for the H-1B cap. .

According to USCIS, for fiscal 2021, the number of petitions filed during the initial filing period was lower than the projected numbers needed to reach the numerical allocations. The discrepancy was linked to multiple factors including Covid emergency. Also FY21 was also the first year the electronic registration process was introduced. “Therefore, in August 2020, we selected additional registrations that were held in reserve. The filing period for registrations selected in August ended on November 16, 2020,” it said.