USCIS Providing Some Flexibility With LCA Issues in H1B Visa Applications
On July 1, 2009 the Department of Labor (DOL) mandated that all LCA filings must be filed through the iCert portal and that individual officers would review filings prior to certification. While estimated processing times were initially 7 days, human error and other systemic problems resulted in filing taking three weeks or longer. Because USCIS rules require a certified LCA to be filed along with the H1B visa petition, many H1B visa applicants were not able to timely file their applications and were capped out or failed to file a timely extension or transfer.
Now it has been over 6 months and the DOL has still not fixed the issues, most notably the FEIN problem. Fortunately, the USCIS has recognized these problems and has given applicants to ways to get around these problems, though neither are perfect fixes.
First, the USCIS will allow H1B visa filings without a certified LCA provided that the LCA was filed with the DOL and has been pending for at least 7 days. However, the pending LCA must be approved at later filed with USCIS. This really isn’t much of a solution because the main cause of delay in LCA cases are denials due to FEIN issues.
Second, the USCIS will forgive late filings where the delay was out of the control of the petitioner. This will be extremely helpful though in cases where the petitioner did not request late filing forgiveness, they will have to pay the fees to reopen the application.
In: H-1B Visa, H-1B Visa Cap, LCA · Tagged with: H-1B Visa, H-1B Visa Cap, LCA