Introduction
In simple terms, the US Visa is a non-immigrant visa (foreign nationals on a temporary visa in the USA for a specific purpose). Under this visa category, US companies permit to employ foreign workers (non-immigrant). For specialty occupations, non-immigrants under an H-B1 visa require theoretical or technical expertise.
Washington
To help foreign tech workers, particularly on H-1B and L1 visas, the US has planned to restart ‘domestic visa revalidation’ under certain categories on a pilot basis. The goal behind this act is to assist non-immigrants and scale up the act in the upcoming years. This is going to be great news, especially for Indians coming from a technical educational background.
Many visa categories in the USA like H-1B were renewed or stamped within the country till 2004. Later, for the H-1B visa category for non-immigrant visa renewal, people had to go out of the country. In fact, the majority of the visa applicants were supposed to go to their native country to obtain the H-1B extension stamp on their passport for the US.
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Passports Renewal
The H-1B visa applicants must stamp their passports with renewal dates for renewal. The complete process is required to validate whether the non-immigrants want to go outside the US and re-enter the US borders again. The US is not allowing restamping of H-1B visas within the US for the time being.
The restamping for visa H-1B applications was the biggest concern for non-immigrant workers and their employers. Another concern was that the particular visa wait time is more than 800 days or more than two years. Therefore, simple H-1B visas are issued for 3 years at a time.
The US state department will launch a pilot visa program to renew H-1B and L-1 visa applications, according to a recent announcement.
Julie Stufft
In the recent exclusive interview by the deputy assistant secretary for visa services Julie Stufft, ‘We all saw during the pandemic how difficult it was for these people to return to their home country and often not be able to get visa appointments to come back to their home, the United States. That’s what we’re trying to address initially with this.
US-based technical/technological companies highly count on non-immigrants under the H-1B visa category. These types of companies tend to hire employees in a bulk every year, significantly from India and China.
Recently a new statement has come out from the State Department spokesperson to PTI that the US is working and planning to restart the service at the earliest for some particular petition-based NIV categories. Further, they hope to have a pilot visa plan later this year.
NIV visa categories
According to the State Department facility, domestic visa revalidation is available until 2004. This is for non-immigrant visa applicants who are physically present in the country. So these applicants can renew their visa applications under certain petition-based NIV visa categories.
In another statement issued by the State Department spokesperson, the speaker did not give any remark on the number of visa holders who would be initially eligible for the H-1B visa. However, the pilot plan will begin with tiny steps (a small number of cases) prior to scaling over the upcoming 1 – 2 years.
President’s Advisory
The Biden administration has taken several steps in the past few months to cut down time and simplify visa processing by eliminating inconvenience. This was a recommendation by the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. The State Department has implemented this suggestion. Earlier, the complete scenario was different in 2004. The native country of the non-immigrant applicants only restamped on H-1B and L1 visas. Applicants had to wait for months to years to get a stamp on their visa. There were cases where many applicants did not receive any response for more than 2 years even after submitting all the documents in the correct manner.
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Ajay Jain Bhutoria from Silicon Valley recommended that US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) allow H1-B and L visas for restamping in the US. So this encouraged the USCIS to designate a respective department or unit to look after visa restamps for H1-B and L1 visa renewal within the US. Then, the commission understood the difficulty level of the visa renewal process for US non-immigrants. The US also acknowledged the vitality of H-1B and L1 visa workers in the country as these non-immigrants support and elevate the US economy.