Lawsuit Filed Against USCIS for Shorter H-1B Visas

A non-profit trade association of IT firms has dragged the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for issuing H1B visas for shorter time than the prescribed duration in law. Challenging the USCIS’s authority for reducing the H-1B visa tenure, the petitioners have also mentioned some incidents of extreme delays in issuing visas.

ITServe Alliance, which represents over a thousand IT companies across the U.S., filed a lawsuit against the immigration body in a U.S. court on Oct.11. The lawsuit said that the laws of the country prescribe a three-year duration for an H-1B visa, unless the sponsoring employer requests for shortening the tenure. But in several cases, USCIS has been issuing visas with a duration of few days to months, the Times of India reported.

The petitioners have mentioned one instance, when a H-1B visa was issued for just 12 days. In some other similar instances, these visas were granted for 28 days and 54 days, added the publication.

Other than that, some other instances of extreme delays have also been reported such as the date of approval came after the expiry of the visa. In one of such instance, an applicant’s visa was approved for June 15, 2018 to Aug.10, 2018 while the notice of approval was dated Aug.29, 2018 which was 19 days after the visa expired.

Terming USCIS’s functioning as unreasonable and illegal, Managing Attorney at immigration.com, Rajiv S Khanna, told the publication that USCIS has arrogated the power, which has been given to the Department of Labor.

Indica news quoted ITServe as saying, “USCIS has been making arbitrary rules and memos for over eight years, it’s our top priority to set things right and hold USCIS accountable to follow the regulations set by the Unites States Congress.”

Its report cited a press note, in which Gopi Kandukuri, ITServe’s national president for 2018 referred to the H-1B denials and said, “Our members are tired of receiving random denials for no reason and the new battlefield for us is the federal courthouse and not USCIS service centers.”

This is not the first instance when USCIS has been sued. In May this year, several technology firms had come together to sue USCIS. They filed a lawsuit over a policy memo claiming it would put bigger restrictions on companies that outsource workers who have H-1B visas.

In that lawsuit, two companies as well as a consortium stated that the USCIS did not have the authority required to make the changes in the rules and impose restrictions on H-1B visas. The lawsuit also claimed that the overreach is in violation of the U.S. Administrative Procedures Act.