H1B visa - High level process flow

Step 01 – Your name gets nominated for the H1B visa from your organization. You would need the following:

1.       Employee Salary Structure(ESS)

2.       Client Letter

3.       Letter from Onsite Manager

4.       LCA letter approved from Department of Labour-USA.

5.       Educational Certificates

6.       Work Experience Documents.

7.       If you have travelled on other kinds of visas to US, you would be required to provide the information of dates and places you have lived.

Step 02 – The Immigration services will process your LCA and once done will flag you. The LCA is done so that Department of Labour is sure that the company is not under paying you.

Step 03 – Your name shall be given to the USCIS for the H1B selection. If initial slot of 20000 is reached (which happens in most cases) additional 65000 visas are made available via lottery known as H1B-CAP for graduate degree holders.

Step 04 – If your name is selected then you will have to go for stamping of your passport with H1B visa to the counsellet.

Step 05 – Since the process takes over a year,the project\client from which the LCA would be processed may change, hence it is advisable to apply for LCA amendment with the new project\client. To achieve the same a new ESS letter and Transfer letter based on client location needs to be generated.

But we can parallely go and get the stamping done on the old LCA to save time.

Once the LCA is amended the H1B visa will also have to be amended.

Step 06 – Face the visa interview and if you pass you are ready to fly.

Disclaimer - This is not legal advice, I'm just jotting down my limited knowledge.