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Who qualifies as Cap exempt in the H-1B lottery? We aim to clarify who and who doesn’t qualify for the H-1B lottery and how to how your organization might be able to create a more predictable talent funnel. As the number of applicants for H-1B lottery increases, finding alternative immigration strategies to fill talent gaps becomes increasingly important for growing teams. 

When can an international candidate start? Or how soon can she start working with us is among the most common questions we receive when working with HR and Talent teams. The answer is a little more complicated than determining a date for non-visa counterparts. We explore a few scenarios for visa and non-visa holders and recommended start dates.

Discover what is the H-1B cap lottery process is and how it works on the Bridge platform.

An overview of what is the H-1B lottery, how the H-1B lottery process works, which employees might qualify and some key dates to consider for the FY2024 H-1B lottery

On Nov 19th, USCIS announced that they will be conducting a third round of selections from the previously submitted second round of H-1B registrations from July 2021. The new filing period will begin on November 22nd and will close on February 23, 2022.

An HR guide for measuring immigration programs and helping People teams to benchmark their immigration function.

If you've standardized and documented some basic sponsorship processes and built a portal for international employee resources, you're likely ahead of many peers. However, it's critical to build out contingency plans to account for employee vacation, potential delays in start dates, etc. to be prepared for worst-case scenarios. It might also be worth collaborating with your immigration vendor to find opportunities where immigration can be leveraged as a talent attractor or retention tool across the organization.

As the nature of work adopts to be more dynamic and flexible, companies that are prepared to enable employees to work in such ways will outperform those that don't. Taking the time to invest in creating standardized processes can save a tremendous amount of resources and reduce risk. Going one step further to allow your employees access to visualize potential sponsorship pathways can help foster a culture of trust and accountability.

Chaotic employee experiences are often hard to diagnose until the team has lost a valuable resource. With technical talent, that impact can be quite costly. Consider some of these lagging indicators to gain perspective on where your team might have opportunities to create a stronger proactive approach to immigration and technical talent retention.

On Friday, the White House announced that it will lift COVID-19 travel restrictions for fully vaccinated global citizens, ending historic restrictions that have barred many from entering the United States. While this last year has been quite testing, hopefully, this news will allow loved ones and foreign workers to reunite with families.

As your talent goals and the candidate landscape continue to change, by implementing some of the tips for training you can stay on top of relevant changes and mitigate any erratic surprises in the immigration space. You also might consider revisiting some core immigration program metrics at regular intervals to take full advantage of the work you’ve already done by creating a policy that adds predictability to your immigration program.

Programmatically managing immigration and training all relevant stakeholders can help reduce the likelihood of errors and also maximize investments across the organization. By offering stakeholder training you can mitigate the chance of one point of failure if someone needs to take time off or moves teams suddenly. Training also allows for a more consistent delivery of the company immigration policy from Talent teams and hiring managers to People Operations in order to standardize expectations for the candidates or employees.

As the pace of work continues to increase, People teams are seeing more of a demand for L&D programs and training to keep their teams up to date with the latest skills and policies. For more nuanced topics, teams are either bringing in subject matter experts or relying more heavily on their vendors to help conduct industry-specific training. 

Once the data is clean and uploaded, the main business users are trained, and the policies are established; immigration turns from an administrative burden into a strategic business endeavor. By unlocking a more holistic People analytics & insights, Talent leaders can arm business leaders to make informed decisions that are not only good for the organization, but also the community and for its people. 

Modern companies require modern access to data and insights, the days of using spreadsheets (not systems) and ad-hoc reporting requests (not on-demand) are being phased out. In the People Operations world, there are very few situations that are static and slow-moving, so shouldn't your data be able to keep up with the pace of your business. But before you throw your old system in the bin, consider what key metrics would be critical to have visibility into and also what sort of vendor can help you best access the data and automated processes that you need.

Once companies choose to engage with visa sponsorship for their workforce, they also inherit more process, vendor, and compliance responsibilities. However, People Operations teams are beginning to ask for more data from the immigration teams. As we see an increasing importance to invest in creating a delightful employee experience and leveraging people data insights to deliver more business value, HR teams are taking a smarter approach to immigration case processing and reporting.

Considerable time and resources have gone into building a repeatable, efficient, and compliant talent program. To ensure your program continues to keep up with the ever-evolving immigration landscape we gathered 5 tips from People teams for immigration I-9 management.

As People teams prepare to scale, it's common to re-evaluate processes and policies to ensure the organization will remain compliant and productive. By standardizing I-9 processes, modern People teams can rest assured they are compliant and turn their attention to other high-value initiatives like employee well-being or DE&I initiatives.

One of the most common ways People teams are introduced into immigration is through the I-9 Form. Every HR professional is familiar with I-9 compliance, but the immigration nuances are where some professionals identify opportunities to organize and streamline processes. We will break down 5 common immigration implications of the I-9 form and how to stay compliant.

While there may never be the perfect immigration risk plan, staying up to date with immigration trends, using data to guide decision-making around sponsorship strategies, and ensuring all key stakeholders are informed and aware of your company's policies are great steps towards proactively mitigating risk within an immigration program.

While immigration risk can seemingly present itself in unpredictable times from the outside, once your team establishes some baseline risk mitigation scenarios you can start to see patterns emerge from your immigration program.

When starting to assess risks associated with immigration, it's important to consider as many of the various possible scenarios as possible and understand the probability and potential severity of each situation.

For budgeting and forecasting, you use historical spending data and future max-out dates to help you make accurate projections of future spending. As a result, you can anticipate the next steps in the immigration process and know the costs associated with each international hire. You can also leverage that data to refine your immigration policy and practices to ensure there is a positive ROI and that your policies are relatively competitive across industry peers.

As one of the critical metrics to help you assess the effectiveness of your recruiting efforts, the cost per hire can vary greatly for international employees. And while the investment in international talent is worth it for the skills it brings into your organization, you need better tools for budgeting and forecasting immigration costs.

If it feels like your process for tracking spending varies tremendously for each international candidate, it may be time to consider re-evaluating how to create an immigration budget. By building your understanding of key levers of immigration costs and how your historical sponsorship costs add up you can more accurately forecast the future.

With guidelines in place to help Talent teams gather candidate immigration information, you now have a repeatable process to help mitigate the risk of surprise immigration issues late in the recruiting process. Providing training and resources to guide the talent acquisition team will help to ensure you address any gaps in your program and deliver a consistently positive candidate experience across your entire organization.‍

You have taken clear steps to standardize the process of determining candidate immigration options, but the next challenge is ensuring recruiting teams use it consistently. Thankfully, bringing more structure and consistency to the way you handle candidate immigration eligibility can result in a smoother hiring process and help you gain more clarity about start dates. By continuing to build on your existing talent acquisition program you can create more transparency and build more predictability.

If you are relying on an ad-hoc and reactive immigration process, you can experience delays that will only slow down your ability to fill open positions with best-fit candidates. Worse, you can end up moving candidates through the interview and selection process, only to find out later that they don’t have viable immigration options. When your organization routinely recruits non-U.S. workers you need mechanisms in place to facilitate well-rounded candidate assessments.

You have built a strong foundation for immigration process management, ensuring all stakeholders have proper visibility into open workflows. You can begin to optimize it by reviewing results, soliciting feedback, and implementing improvements that will ensure you have a functional and effective immigration program suited to your specific Talent and People Operations needs.

One way to further mitigate risk in your PAF is through consistent and periodic spot checks. These checks will add an additional layer of risk mitigation, ensuring that your PAF process is not only error-free today, but remains error-free.

You may have hopes to build a job bank as part of a predictable immigration program but it takes time to learn what your business should include in—or leave out of—job descriptions, especially as immigration regulations and enforcement change. It also takes practice. Crafting immigration-ready job ads is a skill your team strengthens over time which adds consistency and repeatability to a complex process.

Role Standardization can help Talent teams to limit regulatory and legal risks, sharpen their focus on talent planning, and maximize investments in talent while reducing overhead costs. However, once you choose and invest in a comprehensive immigration solution, you can’t rest on your laurels. Your immigration provider should be a strategic partner, helping you move toward batch PERM applications and improving your talent management system.

In order for immigration to help you achieve your talent goals and reduce friction within the sponsorship process, it is critical to consider the impact that job descriptions can have on a case. Job descriptions can influence the outcome of a specific case and also have larger compliance consequences for businesses that pursue sponsorship, which is why working with a provider to help consult and design the candidate experience can help you stay one step ahead.

For busy People teams like yours, answering questions over and over again is probably at, or near, the bottom of your list of important things to do. You have likely made some strides by providing tools that offer more visibility into personnel matters, but the questions keep coming. You may want to move towards a more predictable approach for employee communication by creating resources and guides that cover FAQs.

Your team has invested in data management and the documentation is secure and centralized, making processing sponsorships a breeze. Your organization’s corporate immigration policy has likely set you up for success in this growing global economy. However, you now need to ensure talent who successfully obtained a sponsorship or requires future sponsorship in any capacity is not at risk.

You and your team have moved away from unencrypted and insecure data management practices because they can be susceptible to hacks. So you've established a cloud-based storage system to hold sensitive documents, grant access to key stakeholders, and devised a complicated organization system to ensure all personnel files are accounted for. But might be wondering, how else can all these files be managed?

When an individual is applying for a work visa or working through the corporate immigration process in any capacity, they must submit a number of sensitive documents. People teams have a responsibility to the company and to the individuals going through the sponsorship process to protect sensitive information from hackers and identify thieves.

As an employer of H-1B, H-1B1, or E-3 employees, you are likely quite intentional about your public access file (PAF) internal processes and storage. Workflows, removal, and routine maintenance are all part of managing a compliant PAF system. With People Teams today driving compliance, growth, employee experience, and culture, adopting and adhering to best practices is what keeps your team differentiated from your competitors.

You have developed a mature immigration program with a well-documented immigration policy. Your emerging immigration program has evolved into one that helps you attract and retain international talent for positions that might have otherwise gone unfilled. Now, you may be looking for more ways to bolster your existing practices and deliver more comprehensive benefits to your international employees and their families. 

Though you may already provide international employees with some guidance and support for their immigration journey, you have identified some opportunities to step up the communication and support you offer. Currently, you can ensure international employees get answers to their immigration questions, but you want a more consistent and proactive approach to meeting their needs.

As you incorporate international hiring into your talent acquisition strategy, you need an effective way to help your international employees navigate the immigration process. But if the benefits communication process is chaotic or uneven, your international employees will be unclear about the immigration assistance available to help them.

Now that you’ve established a predictable immigration journey for your international employees, all that’s left to do is gather data and use it to continuously improve. Of course, making data-driven refinements comes with its own set of challenges, but it’s an easier process than what it took for your team to leave a chaotic program behind.

When you leave behind a chaotic immigration process, you begin to offer your international applicants and employees greater visibility and access to legal information. Knowledge and the ability to ask questions can do wonders to reduce the anxiety of the journey, even if it’ll never be totally stress-free.

International employees and applicants will have questions during the recruitment, application, and visa process. That’s to be expected. Unfortunately, the multi-step process is redundant and inefficient, and there’s little People teams can do about it except offer visibility, information, and compassion.

People teams often find themselves in a tight spot—managing current immigration compliance while trying to anticipate changes to come. A top concern among People teams who sponsor international talent? LCA Compliance. With laws, regulations, and enforcement consistently shifting, People teams (or with help from their immigration partners) should keep internal immigration processes top of mind, helping to reduce the risk of non-compliance. After all, no employer wants to deal with the threat of failing a government audit.

Part of the challenge in managing the People Operations function is undoubtedly lack of time. You’re already so busy that trying to get ahead of employee questions seems like a luxury. Now is the time to enlist the help of other teams in setting up a communication and information process. The time invested will result in fewer mistakes, a smoother process, and a better overall employee experience.

On July 29th, USCIS announced that they will be conducting a second round of selections from the previously submitted H-1B registrations from March 2021. The new filing period will begin on August 2nd and will close on November 3rd.

Your team should be applauded for its dedication to process management, problem-solving, and consistency. Yet even within a predictable and compliant immigration program, there may be room to strive for more.

Despite working toward a more predictable and consistent process to tap into global talent pools, more work is often required to drive towards an efficient and compliant immigration program.

Navigating the immigration process can be quite complex without the right process, tools, and people. Whether the undertaking runs smoothly largely depends on whether you’ve established and refined your immigration program and workflow — a constant challenge in an ever-evolving field.

With these updates, you and your team can access current reports on your entire immigration population in Bridge and dive into future planning for employees easier than before.

Last month, President Joe Biden imposed new travel restrictions on India in light of the COVID-19 epidemic, barring most non-US citizens from entering the United States. The proclamation, signed by the President on April 30 and took effect on May 4, outlines the scope of the suspension and the limitations to entry into the US. Basically what this means is that until further notice, those travelers impacted by the proclamation won’t be permitted to enter the US until they have been absent from India for the past 14 days.

After weeks of anticipation, the Department of State just released their November 2020 visa bulletin that dictates when international employees are eligible to file their Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) applications.

On September 24th, the Department of State released their October 2020 visa bulletin that dictates when foreign nationals are eligible to file their Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) applications and new filing dates for EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3.

Meet our new Sales Development Representative who shares his personal experience and why he decided to join Bridge.

Meet our new Sales Development Representative who shares her personal experience and why she decided to join Bridge.

Have questions about your international employees on H-1Bs? Hear from one of our legal partners Hendrik Pretorius, Immigration Counsel of ImmiPartner, as he answers top questions facing HRs and employers during the coronavirus.

Join us March 30th 10am PST/ 1pm EST as our partnering law firm, Immipartner, and other experts talk about how the immigration landscape is changing in the face of travel bans and restrictions during the age of coronavirus, presented by Nova Credit.

With the H-1B lottery season quickly approaching, we want to outline USCIS’ new proposed process and ensure that you have all the information to make the best choices for your company and employees.

The H-1B visa is by far one of the more popular work visas. The H-1B is a temporary work visa which allows a foreign worker to work in a specialty occupation.

Workers who are not authorized to work in the United States must obtain permission from the government to legally work. Learn how sponsorship works for the Green Card.

Having a structured and competitive green card policy can determine whether or not an international employee will be attracted and have the best chance of success at longevity with your company.

In late April, the Trump administration announced the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) protections for citizens of Nepal and has previously stated they would not renew protections for those immigrants of Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, and El Salvador.

Learn how student visas can take advantage of cap-gap and F-1 OPT extensions.

Explore what other options may be available if you're not selected in the H-1B Cap lottery.

What happens when an H-1B cap is filed? We'll take through a step-by-step overview of what you can expect from when you apply for the petition to receiving a decision from USCIS.

Since President Trump took office, DACA has been a hot-button issue. That issue reached its tipping point on Sept. 5, 2017. Learn what this means for DACA employers.

With processing times on the rise and a tumultuous year reaching its end, now is a good time to examine the current landscape of employment-based immigration.

The Department of State has published the May 2018 Visa Bulletin, providing a look at what's in store for visa availability in the U.S. next month.

There are several dates related to every immigration case that are critical to each petitioner’s ability to obtain a visa, and these dates are highlighted in the March 2018 Visa Bulletin.

Visa Bulletins provide visa hopefuls with critical information related to their bids. The June 2018 visa bulletin sees only minor change, but staying current on changes to the bulletin remains critical.

The Department of State (DOS) has issued the July 2018 Visa Bulletin, a monthly release which represents a snapshot of visa availability in the United States. Here's an overview of what's inside this month's bulletin.

With the new year underway, Bridge US takes a look at the January 2017 Visa Bulletin, how it compares to recent bulletins, and what's in store this year.

The U.S. Department of State issues visa bulletins that detail the availability of immigrant visa numbers. This is an overview of the visa bulletin for February 2018.

As 2018 is rapidly approaching, let’s take a look at the December 2017 visa bulletin, and how it compares to last year’s December bulletin and 2017.

Each month, the Visa Bulletin provides sponsored foreign nationals with an updated schedule related to the final step in the process of obtaining a green card and becoming a permanent immigrant.

The way visa applicants think of social media may soon change. DHS will be accepting public comments until May 29 on a rule that allows them access to the social media history of over 14 million people currently applying for a non-immigrant visa.

The USCIS recently unveiled a policy update that's going to make the work visa extension process longer and trickier for employers of foreign nationals.

The USCIS will begin using the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) Signature Confirmation Restricted Delivery service to help secure delivery of documents such as Green Cards and Employment Authorization (EAD) Cards.

The USCIS is recalling 800 Employee Authorization Documents due to a printing error. This marks the agency's second recall in six weeks. The USCIS is making a push to go paperless and cut back on such errors through digital transactions.

USCIS will begin imposing the requirement of an in-person interview across the board for employment-based permanent residence applicants. What does this mean for you and your employer?

The USCIS has officially finished selecting CAP cases for FY2018. This means that USCIS will be sending out all unselected petitions along with the filing fees.

The USCIS is rocketing into the fairly new century by expanding its acceptance of credit card payments for the fees associated with most forms.

USCIS may potentially reinstate PP for all H-1B petitions by October 3rd.

The USCIS and DOJ have announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to formalize a partnership between the two agencies in an effort "to better detect and eliminate fraud, abuse, and discrimination by employers bringing foreign visa workers to the United States."

Lee Francis Cissna has been sworn in as Director of the USCIS, allowing him oversight of immigration policy. His restrictive inclination is well established.

The USCIS officially completed the random selection process for the H-1B Cap for FY 2019 on April 11. In total, 190,098 H-1B petitions were received during the filing period.

USCIS completes data entry of all FY2018 cap cases and unselected petitions will be returned.

International students have a few options to consider when exploring residency in the U.S.

We cover important time frame considerations when traveling with a Green Card and other travel tips for Form I-131 and reentry permits.

Immigrant entrepreneurs have founded nearly half of America's top venture-backed companies. Here are some of the more notable businesses founded by immigrants.

The I-9 Verification Form documents the verification of identity and the employment authorization of each new employee hired to work in the United States.

Microsoft, Ernst & Young, and IBM are some of the top companies hiring the highest number of foreign employees each year.

TN visas permit citizens of Canada and Mexico to work in the U.S. temporarily. Here's a closer look at this visa option's key differences and controversy.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has been in renegotiation with both Canada and Mexico regarding NAFTA, and this could have serious impact on TN visas.

The USCIS was created to enhance the security and efficiency of national immigration services, and the federal immigration service has a long legacy that dates back over a century.

The Supreme Court has reinstated parts of Trump's travel ban. In light of this ruling, it's advised that foreign nationals take the following precautions.

Over 70 percent of tech employees in Silicon Valley are foreign born, and the region is viewed as something of a testing ground for business attitudes toward evolving immigration policies.

Recruiting employees can be a costly and time-consuming business, especially if your company is hiring foreign nationals. We explore a few of the immigration costs employers are responsible for.