Change Of Status Notice: Fill & Download for Free

If your application for H-1B status was filed for consular processing, it will not matter if you travel abroad because you will have to travel abroad to complete the last step of the process, the issuance of the visa at a US consulate abroad.If your application was filed as a change of status, however, you must not leave the United States while the application is pending. Leaving the United States while an application to change status is pending is considered an abandonment of the application to change status. When you leave the United States, your status terminates, and thus there is no longer any status to change.Note that if you’re on F-1 OPT and filing for H-1B, you’re only eligible for “cap-gap” if you file for change of status. Most people in F-1 OPT who are presently working for the employer they are planning to work for under H-1B will file as a change of status in order to get the benefit of the cap-gap extension, and if you’re in this situation you should not travel abroad until your H-1B is awarded and you have received your I-797 notice and your I-94 has been amended to reflect your new status.You may find the advice offered at Common H-1B Question: Change of Status vs. Consular Processing? helpful. (I have no affiliation with Minsky, McCormick and Halligan.) You may also want to speak with the attorney who is handling your H-1B application.

“What will be the implication of the latest USCIS "Notice to Appear " Policy on H1B Visa holders?”Not a whole lot.Under the prior policy, if you filed a change of status or extension of status, and that COS or EOS was ultimately denied, in most cases you would be out of status (because it takes USCIS forever to adjudicate COS and EOS petitions). The petitioner would be expected to depart at that point, but the Administration would not automatically initiate removal proceedings against the now out-of-status petitioner. What the policy is now is that if the petitioner is (or appears to be) out of status because the prior status had expired before the COS or EOS is adjudicated, or because the reason for the denial suggests that the prior status should be revoked, the petitioner will no longer be allowed to depart voluntarily, but will instead be automatically placed in removal proceedings.In cases where the petition is denied before the prior status has expired, and the reason for denial does not suggest that the prior status should be terminated, no notice to appear should issue.H-1B admittees who have, in general, departed after a denial of an extension of stay anyway because their employers are no longer willing to employ them at this point (they face severe fines if they do), and so they pretty much had to leave. The main consequence, as I see it, is to make it slightly harder for a H-1B to survive a job loss event—something that it has been hard for H-1Bs to survive for some time anyway.Immigration news services and immigration advocates (both pro- and anti-) have been running around with their hair on fire over this rulemaking action, when in fact it doesn’t change things much at all for the vast majority of law-abiding immigrants and non-immigrants.Addendum: there is one significant consequence: a person who voluntarily departs the United States while out of status for less than 180 days does not acquire any ban on returning to the United States. However, a person who departs the United States after receiving a notice to appear without appearing at the scheduled hearing or negotiating a voluntary departure in lieu of the hearing is subject to an automatic five-year ban on reentry. This policy will likely increase the number of people who acquire five-year bans under INA 212(a)(6)(B).

Yes, I would issue the visa.The INA section 214(b) says, “Every alien … shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time of application for a visa, and the immigration officers, at the time of application for admission, that he is entitled to a nonimmigrant status…”Notice ‘at the time of application.” The consular officer cannot and should not presume more than that which appears to be in the applicant’s mind during the interview. A suspicion that the applicant might change his mind later is no/no reason to refuse the visa.State and the Bureau of Consular Affairs used to - and I suspect still do - occasionally remind consular officers of the warning that pertains to the universe of US law enforcement as well: ‘Mere suspicion is not enough.’