This is a Guest Post by H1B Wiki Visitor. We would like to thank her for the insights and suggestions.
In 2013, many immigration attorneys predicted that USCIS will receive H1B petitions to the tune of 100, 000. However, USCIS received 124, 000 in the first five days. My petition reached USCIS on the sixth day. With a double master’s in business administration and healthcare administration, I was upset with my employer. Generally employers mail the H1b petition on March 31st morning so that it reaches USCIS promptly on April 1st – not in my case though. Fortunately, I had time left on my F1 student VISA for another chance at the H1B VISA application season.
In 2014, same set of attorneys predicted the petition number to be 150, 000 & USCIS received 172, 500 petitions & the quota reached within six days. This time, my petition reached USCIS within first six days. However, it wasn’t “selected in lottery”.
For 2015, The numbers were 233,000 petitions. Are you one of these 233,000? If you are, then I urge you to read this article and spend some time building Plan B.
The purpose of this first part is to lay out the odds – not the optimistic numbers, not the pessimistic ones – the ACTUAL odds of an application being selected in lottery process and be approved. The second part of this series describes in brief how I averted the H1B lottery and secured a job with cap-exempt employer. If I had to go through the process of securing a cap-exempt job all over again, then how I would do it – this is described in the third part of this series.
Since 233,000 petitions are filed in 2015 and assuming that the readers do not have an advanced degree, the odds of being selected in the H1B lottery are very minimal. Assuming that the reader has an advanced degree then, the odds are little bit better than the general quota since they get 2 chances in the lottery pool. After the selection comes ‘approval’. Popular opinion says that recently the number of H1B applications being rejected is increasing steadily. Nonetheless, it is popular opinion (even if unsubstantiated) that about 85% petitions are approved.
If you are thinking, ‘what are my alternatives?’ then I hate to break it to you that there are only three other viable alternatives that I know of. Depending on how you feel about each one, you can choose to build a Plan B. Not in any order the three alternatives to securing employment in USA while maintaining a valid VISA status are
- Employment via H4 EAD
- Employment via a cap-exempt employer and
- Part-time employment via an F1 VISA with a CPT or OPT.
There are NO other alternatives in my knowledge. Nonetheless, there is nothing to be disheartened about. The next article will discuss how to avert the H1B lottery in the first place.
A Very well written article !!!