Notice of Action Blog

For immediate release. April 1, 2010. WASHINGTON ─ U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) transmitted an interim final rule to the Federal Register today that prohibits employers from filing H-1B petitions that are not supported by the additional $5,000 public appeasement fee. The new rule also expressly prohibits immigration attorneys from representing US employers who are seeking to hire these temporary workers. These changes will ensure that companies filing H-1B petitions subject to congressionally mandated numerical limits have an equal chance to appease the concerned public before they employ an H-1B worker as well as curb fraud and abuse. To ensure a fair and orderly distribution of available H-1B visas, USCIS will deny or revoke petitions filed by an employer and will not refund the filing fees submitted without the new fee and will deny all petitions supported by Form G-28. USCIS expects that these rules will generate considerable controversy and has made arrangements with call center contractors serving the USCIS national customer service 800-number in Bangalore, India and the Philippines to reduce their response time to less than 1 minute in order to assist all stakeholders seeking information about these important changes to the H1B program.