How to Secure Your H-1B Visa: a Practical Guide for International Professionals and Their US Employers

"James Bach and Robert Werner’s How to Secure Your H-1B Visa is written for both employers and the workers they hire." Andrew Hacker, "The Frenzy about High-Tech Talent", The New York Review of Books, July 9, 2015

The H-1B visa is the gateway for the world’s best and brightest to live and work in the United States as IT professionals, engineers, scientists, professors, doctors, nurses, and researchers. How to Secure Your H‑1B Visa guides employees and employers alike through the maze of H-1B laws, policies, and procedures. This road map lays out the whole H-1B process from petition to visa to status maintenance to visa extension and, ultimately, to permanent residence in the US for you and your family. It shows you step by step exactly how the H-1B process divides up between the employer and employee. It identifies the points where the two tracks converge and the H-1B employer and employee need to pull in tandem.

Navigation icons tell you at a glance whether a topic concerns employees and employers equally or primarily one or the other. Sidebars highlight pitfalls, liabilities, and disasters to avoid; tips and exceptions to leverage for success; administrative and enforcement trends and late-breaking changes; and special conditions that apply to nationals of particular countries, such as India and China. Ancillary chapters cover complementary visas for family members and H-1B substitute visas for professionals with particular skill sets or from particular countries, such as Australia and Canada.

The authors are Silicon Valley immigration lawyers with 60 years combined experience handling professional work visas. Whether you are an international professional desiring to work in the US for the first time, an international student in the US wishing to remain after graduation, or a hiring manager or HR specialist for a sponsoring entity, thisshort book will show you how to secure, maintain, and leverage your H-1B visa and answer all your questions about:

• quotas and exemptions
• RFEs and consular interviews
• dual representation by the employer’s lawyer
• LCA compliance, auditing, and penalties
• serial H-1B employers
• termination and benching regulations
• reconciling filing deadlines with expiration dates
• transitioning from academic to affiliated to private H-1B employment

James A. Bach is an immigration attorney in San Francisco. He has been working exclusively with immigration cases for several decades, and has lectured and written extensively on immigration law subjects. He serves as Chair of the California State Bar's Immigration and Nationality Advisory Commission, which writes and grades the California Immigration and Nationality Specialty Examination. He is a member of the Board of Legal Specialization of the State Bar of California and an Arbitrator for the San Francisco Bar Association. He received a JD from the Hastings College of the Law, University of California, and a BA from Dartmouth College.