Pasricha & Patel
In the aftermath of the December 1, 2020 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that had blocked the further implementation of the Department of Homeland Security’s Interim Final Rule (IFR), Strengthening the H-1B Nonimmigrant Visa Classification Program, (in the matter of (Chamber of Commerce, et al. v. DHS, et al., 12/1/20), the USCIS has announced that it will fully comply with the court’s ruling.
The DHS’s regulations that were scheduled to take effect on Monday, December 7, 2020, would have allowed the DHS to change the regulatory definition and standards for determining what a “specialty occupation” is, and it would have greatly shortened the validity period of H-1B approvals for third-party placement H-1B petitions to maximum of one (1) year.
