H-1B visa 2016 process

If you are working in a large services company like Infosys or Cognizant, you might be seeing that some of your team members have started one to one discussion with their managers. They could be the H1 aspirants. All of a sudden they would have started working pro-actively on their tasks and might be showing exceptional capabilities. They are the H1 aspirants trying to hog the limelight.

Is your Colleague going to apply for H1?

The answer is “YES” if you are seeing the above traits.

Do you also want to apply for H1? If the answer is “YES”

This is how you can do

In most of the companies, the internal H1 nomination starts in November and the process is frozen in December. However based on approval from your leads you can still apply in February/March timeframe too. Well if you are one of the aspirants dreaming of traveling to America, you should start talking to your manager before it’s too late. The internal process for getting H-1B visa for 2016 has started. You should start the process now. The company and the attorney will do all the paper work and file it in April 2016. You will get the approval in June-July 2016. If your visa is approved, then you are ready fro travel from October 2016.

Related Article: Looking to work in Canada? Take The Express Entry

Checklist before applying for H-1B Visa:

• Make sure that you have all the details related to a project. You should have a valid project code, client’s manager Name, address, work location etc.
• Check with your HR or the person who handles visa. They will give you a detailed checklist. Every company follows certain guidelines. They may change the guidelines based on previous years’ selection/rejection criteria and the cap decided for a company.
• You should not have a valid L-1 or H-1B issued from the same company to initiate the H-1B in 2016.
• Please initiate your H-1B application on your internal portal. Please take note of the instructions given by your company. Failure to abide by the guidelines and not uploading documents as per the checklist will result in your initiation not being considered for the H-1B drive.

• Please raise an initiation only when all documents as per the checklist are available.
• All the following documents need to be uploaded on to the initiation. Any of these documents missing in then the immigration team will send back to employee/approver and the process cannot be taken ahead.
• Documents indicated as project manager’s responsibility from 13-15 needs to be provided to the immigration team.
• Only Convocation certificates of the highest degree will be accepted. All provisional degree holders need to ensure to raise an initiation only when the convocation certificate/ original degree are available.

Table1: H-1B visa 2016 Checklist

• In order to be eligible to apply for H-1B, 16 Years of education or IT work experience is mandatory. Diploma holders should have 9 years of IT Experience and should provide a detailed work experience letter.
• Non IT background applicants (BE in civil/Mechanical/Chemical/Leather/Production/Metallurgical Engineering) should have minimum 3 years of IT experience and should provide a detailed work experience letter from prior & current employer.
• The Program Manager or group lead should inform the Employees who are shortlisted for H1 B 2016 to initiate the process. The initiations without the manager’s Approvals will be deleted from the system. There is no exception or manual control to stop the system from deleting such initiation, so make sure that you loop in your manager and get the approval in a timely manner. Raise an initiation ONLY when instructed by your Manager.
• Please initiate your H-1B 2016 ONLY when you have all documents that you are responsible for, as per the checklist given by your HR. Failure to upload all the documents can lead to delays or cancellation of the initiation by your company.
• Every initiation submitted & approved by the Project Manager undergoes another round of approvals from Immigration team .In case if immigration team  informs you  approval is pending, please  reach out to your Project Manager  for further detail
• Submission of an initiation does not guarantee the filing of the application with the USCIS. The filing of an application purely depends of various internal & external factors.

Steps for applying for H-1B Visa:

Once you have the required document, then you should initiate the process. Normally, there would be an internal website where you can apply. For example

Accenture: https://rmsc.accenture.com

Cognizant: https://onecognizant.cognizant.com

Once you login, go to My Visa App and initiate the process.

Please check if you have an existing initiation before raising a new initiation. In case of a duplicate initiation, there is a risk of Immigration Team cancelling all the old initiations because of lack of clarity on which initiation to consider. Check your internal portal on the status of any previous initiations for the same country and visa type raised.

• The employee raising the initiation will be responsible for completing the following steps
  • Checking duplicate initiations,
  • Initiation
  • Immigration Information)
• Your India project manager/ approver’s details should be mentioned in the “Home Country Project Manager” and “Host Country Project Manager” field.
• Immigration Team will be able to determine your application for H-1B only based on your passport number and date of joining. Wrong entry will result in the delay in processing your application or the nomination will be ignored.
• Please note that Immigration Team can access or view the initiation only when the status is “Submitted to Immigration Team”.
• In case the status is “Pending Immigration Information from assignee” or “Pending for Project Approval”, the initiation is either pending with you or your project manager. Immigration Team cannot assist on moving such cases to the next stage. Such an initiation will get deleted if it is in the same stage for 14 days.
• The passport should be valid for more than 6 months and above (That is beyond October 01, 2013)
• The initiation will be approved by Immigration Team only when the complete set of documents is uploaded as per the checklist given below.
• Immigration Team will reject an initiation if it is pending for additional information/documents from the applicant for more than 5 business days after sending back the initiation.
• Your resource allocation group can stop the H1-B process and ask Immigration Team to reject the nomination in case it is not cleared. Please follow up with your Senior Manager in case Immigration Team indicates that your nomination is not cleared.
• In case all the documents are submitted in the initiation at the first instance, Immigration Team will approve the initiation and the applicant will be notified through an auto-mailer. No follow up required.

Couple of Commonly  asked Questions

1) I joined the company in July 2015, Can I apply for H1 drive of 2016

Answer: Yes, if you have 16 years of education (see table above) and you have relevant work experience, you can apply. Normally the companies put restriction for L1 visa but for H1 visa, there is no such rule. Although Freshers may be denied H1 visa and the general norm is that you should have atlest 2-3 years of work experience. It is fine even if you have experience in other company.

2) In my passport, the last name is blank, Can I still apply for visa

Name Bifurcation in the passport as Given Name and Surname is mandatory to ensure smooth Social Security Number formalities in the US. However if you are using only your first name, then apply by giving the first name as FNU, which stands for First Name Unknown. However if you have 2 names given in your passport, like “Sameep Kumar”and the last name is blank, then it’s better to bifurcate the name, write Sameep in the first name, and Kumar in the last name. Making change in the passport may take time so, make the changes before applying for the visa.

*Comment on this post if you have any query/clarification*

All the best.

Hope your dream to travel to US comes true.