Immigration News

Filing multiple H-1B visa petitions for same worker is prohibited.

If you're considering stuffing the H-1B visa ballot box with duplicate applications for the same job candidate to improve your odds that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will pick your visa petition in the random H-1B lottery next month, forget about it.well, a new interim USCIS rule that was published today in the Federal Register and takes effect immediately prohibits employers from filing multiple H-1B petitions for the same worker. If you're caught violating the rule, USCIS will throw out your duplicate petitions, withhold the visas, and keep your money. "USCIS will deny or revoke multiple petitions filed by an employer for the same H-1B worker and will not refund the filing fees submitted with multiple or duplicative petitions," says the rule. However, the rule does have a loophole for some employers. It doesn't preclude "related employers (such as a parent company and its subsidiary) from filing petitions on behalf of the same alien for different positions, based on a legitimate business need," said USCIS. USCIS says the new rule is "to ensure a fair and orderly distribution of available H-1B visas." It's meant to level the playing field for all employers seeking to hire foreign workers, such as technology professionals. On April 1, USCIS begins accepting from employers H-1B visa petitions for foreign workers that companies are seeking to hire in fiscal 2009, which begins on Oct. 1.

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