Overseas workers living in the US on the H-1B work US visa can work for many different companies on the same visa, according to the nation’s immigration agency. The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant US visa, enabling US companies to hire overseas workers in specialty occupations needing technical or theoretical expertise.
Tech firms in the US often depend on this visa to employ tens of thousands of immigrant workers every year from nations such as India and China. According to a tweet from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), H-1B US visa workers can generally work for multiple employers, although they need to have approved I-129 forms for each of them, the petition for which should be submitted before employment starts.
I-129 forms need to be submitted to USCIS by the employer or potential employer of a non-immigrant worker, giving details of said worker. The rule is not new, yet few people seem to be aware of its significance given that H-1B US visas are capped at 65,000 per fiscal year, thanks to a Congressional mandate. There is an exception from this cap for the initial 20,000 such petitions filed for non-immigrant workers who have a Master’s degree or higher from a US university.
Immigration lawyers are witnessing a major change in the way such US visas are being processed this year, according to the immigration attorney, Tsion Chudnovsky. Denial rates in this year’s cap are expected to increase to as high as 40 percent.