Requirement 1 – You must have an employer-employee relationship with the petitioning U.S. employer.


In general, a valid employer-employee relationship is determined by whether the U.S. employer may hire, pay, fire, supervise or otherwise control the work of the H-1B worker. In some cases, the sole or majority owner of the petitioning company or organization may be able to establish a valid employer-employee relationship, if the facts show that the petitioning entity has the right to control the beneficiary’s employment.

+ How do I demonstrate an employer-employee relationship if I own my own company? 

Requirement 2 – Your job must qualify as a specialty occupation by meeting one of the following criteria:


  • A bachelor’s degree or higher degree or its equivalent is normally the minimum requirement for the particular position;
  • The degree requirement is common for this position in the industry, or the job is so complex or unique that it can only be performed by someone with at least a bachelor’s degree in a field related to the position;
  • The employer normally requires a degree or its equivalent for the position; or
  • The nature of the specific duties is so specialized and complex that the knowledge required to perform the duties is usually associated with the attainment of a bachelor’s or higher degree.

+ How do I prove that my position within my business is in an occupation that normally requires a degree in a related field?


Requirement 3 – Your job must be in a specialty occupation related to your field of study.


+ How do I show that my degree is related to the specialty occupation?

+ Can I qualify without a bachelor’s degree?


Requirement 4 – You must be paid at least the actual or prevailing wage for your occupation, whichever is higher.


The prevailing wage is determined based on the position in which you will be employed and the geographic location where you will be working (among other factors). The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) maintains a database with applicable current prevailing wage levels based on occupation and work location. To view the wage database and estimate the prevailing wage that may be required for your position, click here.

+ How do I demonstrate that I will be paid the appropriate wage?


Requirement 5 – An H-1B visa number must be available at the time of filing the petition, unless the petition is exempt from numerical limits.


The H-1B visa has an annual numerical limit, or cap, of 65,000 visas each fiscal year. The first 20,000 petitions filed on behalf of beneficiaries with a U.S. master’s degree or higher are exempt from the cap. Additionally, H-1B workers who are petitioned for or employed at an institution of higher education (or its affiliated or related nonprofit entities), a nonprofit research organization, or a government research organization are not subject to this numerical cap.  Cap numbers are often used up very quickly, so it is important to plan in advance if you will be filing for an H-1B visa that is subject to the annual H-1B numerical cap. The U.S. government’s fiscal year starts on Oct. 1. H-1B petitions can be filed up to 6 months before the start date, which is generally April 1 for an October 1 start date.

 

 

by MICHELLE MALKIN November 13, 2015 12:00 AM @MICHELLEMALKIN
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426989/myth-h-1b-job-creation-michelle-malkin
Technology workers from overseas benefit only the big businesses that employ them.
Every day brings new headlines, ignored by the Washington press corps, of U.S. workers losing their livelihoods to cheap H1-B-visa replacements. Just this week, Computerworld reported: “Fury and fear in Ohio as IT jobs go to India.” Yet it remains an article of faith among big-business flacks and Beltway hacks that H-1B not only protects American jobs but also fuels miraculous job growth. The myths are recycled and regurgitated by the likes of Senator Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), who claims that “foreign-born STEM workers complement the American workforce, they don’t take American jobs.” Bill Gates, citing the National Foundation for American Policy, which is run by one-man Beltway-advocacy research-shop operative Stuart Anderson, testified before Congress that “a recent study shows for every H-1B holder that technology companies hire, five additional jobs are created around that person.” Citing another NFAP study by economics professor Madeline Zavodny of Agnes Scott College, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asserted: “2.62 MORE JOBS are created for U.S.-born workers for each foreign-born worker in the U.S. with a U.S. STEM graduate degree.” But even the reliably pro-immigration expansionist Wall Street Journal had to call out Bill Gates on his misleading testimony to Congress regarding oft-cited NFAP job-creation figures. First off, the data set was confined to S&P 500 technology companies, which “excludes the leading users” of H-1B visas — offshore outsourcing companies from India, such as Infosys, Wipro, and Tata. Moreover, Carl Bialik, the newspaper’s “Numbers Guy,” reported that the study Gates cited to claim amazing H-1B job generation “shows nothing of the kind. Instead, it finds a positive correlation between these visas and job growth. These visas could be an indicator of broader hiring at the company, rather than the cause.” University of California–Davis professor Norm Matloff explained that Gates’s false conclusion is a common analytical error known as Simpson’s Paradox, “in which the relation between two variables is very misleading, due to their mutual relation to a third variable.” NFAP’s Zavodny study was published by the American Enterprise Institute, sponsored by open-borders billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Partnership for a New American Economy, and touted by the open-borders U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the pro-H-1B FWD.us. Zavodny’s study initially examined data from the years 2000 to 2010. She hypothesized that states with more foreign-born workers would have higher rates of employment among native-born Americans. Initially, she was unable to find a significant effect of foreign-born workers on U.S. jobs. So what changed? In correspondence with me and John Miano (the co-author of our new book, Sold Out, on the foreign-guest-worker racket), Zavodny revealed that when she showed her initial results to the study sponsor, the backers came up with the idea of discarding the last three years of data — ostensibly to eliminate the effects of the economic recession — and trying again. Voilà! After recrunching the numbers at the sponsor’s request, Zavodny found the effect the study sponsor was hoping to find. Standard research practice is to formulate a research hypothesis and specify a study sample before the analysis has been completed. The practice of “data dredging” — that is, tweaking the sample data until one gets rid of “anomalous results” — is frowned upon. To her credit, Zavodny provided her data to a curious software developer in Silicon Valley who was interested in immigration policy. The blogger, R. Davis, discovered a number of serious methodological deficiencies in Zavodny’s work. Most important, he documented that Zavodny’s results are highly sensitive to the date range selected. When she studied the years 2000–07, she found 100 foreign-born workers in STEM fields with advanced degrees from U.S. universities were associated with 262 additional jobs for native-born Americans. But change the date range a little bit, to 2002–08, and the exact same regression model shows the destruction of 110 jobs for natives, according to the independent researcher. While industry lobbyists have to employ dubious and convoluted means to show H-1B creates jobs, it is brutally simple to show that H-1B workers take American jobs. Also, Zavodny’s “262 additional jobs” factoid deals not with H-1B visa holders but with foreign-born workers in so-called STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) who have advanced degrees (that is, a master’s or doctorate) from U.S. universities. About 45 percent of H-1B visa holders do not have advanced degrees (as noted above), let alone advanced degrees from U.S. universities. According to public-policy professor Ron Hira of Howard University, only 1 in 206 of H-1B workers at offshore outsourcing giant Infosys holds an advanced degree from a U.S. university. Even fewer of Tata Consultancy Services’ H-1B workers do — just 1 in 222. So there is almost no overlap between the highly educated workers in Zavodny’s “262 additional jobs” analysis and the mostly entry-level workers who actually come to the U.S. on H-1B visas. While industry lobbyists have to employ dubious and convoluted means to show H-1B creates jobs, it is brutally simple to show that H-1B workers take American jobs. Just ask the folks who trained their own H-1B replacements at Disney, Southern California Edison, Toys “R” Us, Fossil, and countless other companies across the nation. (Note: This column is adapted from Malkin and Miano’s new book, How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America’s Best & Brightest Workers, published by Mercury Ink/Simon & Schuster.) — Michelle Malkin is author of the new book Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs. Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com. © 2015 Creators.com
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426989/myth-h-1b-job-creation-michelle-malkin