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H-1B Denials in Consulates

By Annie Banerjee

The Consulates in several posts just does not understand Immigration Law., especially the H-1B law. As it is, only 65,000 slots are opened every year, and over 100,000 applications are filed. So the lucky few who get in and get approved by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has to go to the Consulates.

The consulates, especially in Chennai, India tend to believe that small consultation firms cannot get H-1B applicants. So they ask for a laundry list of documents, including the employer's tax records, showing net profit, quarterly taxes, number of employees , etc. This is presumably to prove that the employer is actually doing business. Recently in an H-1B case, the Company was showing a net profit of over 200K. The consultants was to be paid $50k. At the time of filing the H-1B petition with the CIS, the employer had 45 employees. At the time of the consulate interview, the employer had 40 employee. The Chennai consulate denied the case and send it back to the CIS for "fraud investigation." This can take years!!!!

In another case in Sydney Australia, the Consulate officer asked whether the perspective employee knew the employer, and asked whether he knew if the employer is married. The employee knew the employer, but was not related. This case also got denied and sent to fraud investigation. Where does the H-1B regs say that the employee cannot know the employer? Would people like Michael Chertoff, Alberto Gonzales etc get a job if they did not know Pres Bush?

In this huge H-1B crisis, if the visas get denied, employers will simply outsource all work. If the H-1B workers were allowed to come in, the US would get the taxes, spending, etc. Now that will go to India or China. And yes, our debt to those countries will continue to increase.

In this labor day week end, if you know of a tiotally unfair consulate denial, please write. We can submit these stories to the Department of State.

Full post as published by US Immigration Matters on August 29, 2008 (boomark / email).