Preparing for the H-1B electronic registration for FY2021 | INSZoom

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Preparing for the H-1B electronic registration
for FY2021
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• On December 6, 2019, the United States
  Citizenship and Immigration Service
  (USCIS) officially announced that they finished
  testing their new H-1B registration system and
  confirmed that they will be rolling it out for
  the upcoming H-1B cap season.

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• This system, initially proposed by USCIS
  on December 3, 2018, has been a long time coming.
  Essentially, it will require employers to
  register each foreign national for whom they
  intend to file an H-1B visa with an online
  registration system. USCIS will electronically
  select the cases they will adjudicate, notify the
  corresponding employers, and those employers will
  then prepare and submit H-1B visa applications
  for the selected cases.

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• In the agencys own words, they believe this new
  electronic registration process will
  dramatically streamline processing by reducing
  paperwork and data exchange and will provide an
  overall cost savings to petitioning employers.

And in many ways, an H-1B registration system is
a logical solution to the manual lottery system
in place today that requires employers to prepare
and submit entire H-1B petitions just to have
many of those petitions rejected and sent back,
costing employers, and law firms, time and
resources.
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• But like with any new system, theres uncertainty
  around how its going to go, whether there are
  going to be any bugs or other issues, and how to
  plan accordingly.
• So, we asked immigration professionals how
  theyre preparing for the H-1B registration
  system, and heres what we heard.
• Prepare entire H-1B petitions in advance

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• Given that this is the first year USCIS is
  rolling out this H-1B registration system, we
  werent surprised that most of the people we
  spoke to said they plan to proceed by preparing
  entire H-1B petitions in advance like they have
  in the past, at least this time around.

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• This doesnt necessarily mean that every H-1B
  petition will be prepared in full. More
  complicated cases or senior-level candidates, for
  example, might get their petitions prepared in
  advance to be sure all the Ts are crossed, and
  Is are dotted, while less complex cases may be
  only partially completed or not started at all
  unless the USCIS registration system confirms
  their acceptance.

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• The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
  ran a survey recently asking participants a
  similar question. According to them, Most
  organizations indicated that they would prepare
  at least some, if not all, H-1B petitions for FY
  2021 H-1B cap in advance of the lottery.
• So, this seems to be a favored tactic, at least
  this year. But its not the only tactic.
• Prepare partial H-1B petitions in advance

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• Organizations that dont want to prepare entire
  H-1B petitions in advance but also dont want to
  leave everything until the last minute may
  consider partially preparing their H-1B petitions
  so that only some of the work would remain.

For example, employers can gather required
support documentation from their H-1B candidates,
prepare required translations or evaluations,
file LCAs and so on, and leave the government
forms and remaining legal documents until the end.
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• Yes, translations, evaluations and other
  ancillary H-1B services cost some money, and so
  doing them in advance does mean you would spend a
  little money before knowing whether the
  beneficiary in question will be selected. But the
  point here is to prepare a portion of the H-1B
  process, specifically anything that may require
  waiting on third party service providers, like
  the translation services in question, which could
  get overwhelmed once USCIS selects which H-1B
  petitions it will adjudicate.

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• This way, once USCIS confirms which H-1B
  beneficiaries are selected, their petitions can
  be quickly completed, checked and submitted for
  adjudication.
• Its a halfway point between fully completing
  your cases in advance and not starting any at
  all, creating some sense of preparedness but not
  spending more resources than needed.
• Wait and see who is selected before preparing
  H-1B petitions
• Finally, there are those who want to wait and see.

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• This option may be favored by small employers who
  only hire a handful of H-1B workers each year and
  so dont have the kind of volume that requires
  robust advance planning.
• This strategy may also be an option if an
  employer has alternate visa options for their
  H-1B potentials, e.g. continuing them on a TN,
  and therefore isnt putting all their eggs into
  the H-1B basket.
• Ultimately, the wait-and-see approach is the
  least favorite approach, though its certainly a
  great option for employers that dont file too
  many cap cases.

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• Whatever you choose, were here for you
• Overall, it seems that most employers are
  planning to do at least some kind of H-1B prep
  work whether preparing full petitions or just
  gathering information and documentation in
  advance given the uncertainty around the H-1B
  registration system.

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• At INSZoom, were committed to helping our
  clients through the H-1B registration system
  regardless of which of the above methods they
  adopt. For example, we recently launched an
  artificial intelligence-powered bot called Zoomi
  that can read scanned documents, including
  government forms, supporting documents and more,
  recognize important information, and
  appropriately auto-populate INSZoom, saving our
  users both time and cost.

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• So, whether its completing the H-1B application
  as usual, coordinating between beneficiary,
  petitioner and law firm to simply gather required
  documents without completing the full
  application, or just creating new H-1B cases but
  otherwise waiting before taking further steps,
  were here to make the process as smooth as
  possible.

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• If you have any questions about how to best
  leverage INSZoom throughout the H-1B registration
  process, please contact us.
• Happy holidays from all of us here at INSZoom!