The Trump administration has announced a new policy that makes very tough the procedure of issuing H-1B visas to those to be employed at one or more third-party worksites, a move that will hugely impact Indian IT companies and their employees.
Under the new policy, the company would have to go an extra length to prove that its H-1B employee at a third-party worksite has specific and non-qualifying speculative assignments in a speciality occupation.
As such the issuing of H-1B visas could be of less than three years. This would reverse the tradition of issuing the H-1B visas for three years at a time. Effective immediately, the new guidance comes weeks ahead of the beginning of the H-1B visas filing season, which is expected to be April 2, for the fiscal year 2019 beginning October 1, 2018.
The guidance says in order for an H-1B petition involving a third-party worksite to be approved, the petitioner must show by a preponderance of the evidence that the beneficiary will be employed in a speciality occupation and the employer will maintain an employer-employee relationship with the beneficiary for the duration of the requested validity period.
Extensions of H-1B visas have become even tougher, in particular, if the employee has been on a bench for any part of their previous duration. Sometimes American companies abruptly end the contract of an employee, as a result, the workers temporarily do not have any work, which in IT parlance is called on the bench.
