WASHINGTON - U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it has received a sufficient number of H-1B petitions to reach the statutory cap of 65,000 for fiscal year (FY) 2012. USCIS is notifying the public that yesterday, Nov. 22, 2011, was the final receipt date for new H-1B specialty occupation petitions requesting an employment start date in FY 2012.
Our office was retained to process an H-1 Change of Status petition for a Quality Assurance Engineer working on a turnkey project owned by a middle vendor at a client location. We explained to USCIS that the end-client was infact the vendor, who “owned” the project. USCIS denied the petition, holdingthat we had failed to obtain proper documentation from the end-client. We filed an MTR with extensive arguments and evidence that the petitioner was the actual employer of the beneficiary and that the vendor, not the end-client, owned the project.