How to Transfer Your H-1B Visa to a New Employer

To transfer your H-1B visa to a new employer, the new company files a fresh H-1B petition with USCIS on your behalf, and under the portability rule you can start working for them the moment that petition is filed. USCIS technically treats this as a new petition rather than moving your existing visa from one employer to another, but the practical effect is what most people want: you keep working, keep your status, and skip the annual H-1B lottery entirely.

Who Qualifies

Federal law sets three conditions you must meet before a new employer can file for you. You must have been lawfully admitted to the United States. The new employer must file a non-frivolous petition before your current authorized stay expires. And you must not have worked without authorization at any point since your last lawful admission.¹ Miss any one of these and USCIS will deny the petition, and your work authorization with the new employer never begins.

The job itself has to qualify as a specialty occupation, meaning it requires at least a bachelor’s degree in a directly related field as a minimum for entry.² This is the same standard your original H-1B had to meet. The new employer carries the burden of proving it.

You do not need permission from your current employer to transfer. Nothing in the statute or USCIS guidance requires you to notify them before the new employer files. Most people wait until the new petition is actually filed before giving notice, since the filing itself is what triggers your authorization to start the new job.

What Your New Employer Files

Before filing anything with USCIS, your new employer has to obtain a certified Labor Condition Application from the Department of Labor. The LCA is the employer’s attestation that hiring you won’t undercut wages or working conditions for similar workers in the same geographic area.³ The certified LCA has to cover the specific work you’ll perform before the petition goes to USCIS.

With the LCA in hand, the employer completes Form I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker.⁴ This form covers job duties, salary, work location, and the employer’s federal tax ID number. You’ll need to hand over your educational credentials, a copy of your passport, your most recent I-94 arrival/departure record, and evidence of your current H-1B status such as prior I-797 approval notices.

Include recent pay stubs from your current job. They aren’t a formal statutory requirement, but immigration attorneys almost universally recommend them because they head off the most common reason USCIS issues a Request for Evidence: doubt about whether you’ve been maintaining valid status.

When You Can Start Work

The portability rule is the reason transfers work the way they do. You are authorized to begin working for the new employer the moment they file the petition. You do not wait for USCIS to approve it.¹

“Upon filing” means when the employer mails or electronically submits the petition package. The receipt notice USCIS sends back (Form I-797C) is your tangible proof the petition was filed, and your new employer should keep it for employment verification. Your work authorization continues until USCIS makes a final decision. Approval means you keep going normally. Denial means your authorization to work for the new employer ends immediately.¹

A denial while you’re already working at the new job is a real problem. You’d generally need to stop working immediately and either find another employer willing to file a fresh petition, change to a different visa status, or leave the country. That’s why the quality of the petition matters so much. A sloppy filing isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a potential status emergency.

If You Lost Your Job First

If you were laid off, terminated, or resigned before a new employer filed for you, you aren’t immediately out of status. Federal regulation gives H-1B workers a grace period of up to 60 consecutive days after employment ends, or until the end of your current authorized validity period, whichever comes first.⁵ You get this grace period once per authorized validity period, and DHS can shorten it at its discretion.

During the 60 days you’re still considered to be in valid status, but you cannot work unless you have separate authorization. The window exists so you can line up a new sponsor, change to a different visa classification, or arrange to leave. If a new employer files a petition on your behalf during this period, you can stay in the U.S. while it’s processed.

Timing matters enormously. A petition filed on day 59 may be accepted, but USCIS could approve the transfer while denying the extension of stay, which would force you to leave the country and re-enter with a new visa stamp before you could start working. Have your new employer file as early in the 60-day window as possible. Once the grace period runs out with no pending petition, you’re out of status, and recovering from that is far harder than preventing it.

Traveling While Your Transfer Is Pending

Leaving the country while a transfer is pending is one of the riskier moves you can make, though it’s not automatically fatal. USCIS has said that departing the U.S. while an H-1B petition requesting an extension of stay is pending will “generally not serve as a basis to deny the extension request.”⁶ The word “generally” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

To re-enter while the transfer is pending, you’ll need a valid passport, a valid H-1B visa stamp (which may still reference your old employer), your prior I-797 approval notices, and the receipt notice for the new petition. If your existing visa stamp has expired, you cannot get a new stamp based on a pending petition. You’d have to wait for the approval. And if USCIS denies the transfer while you’re abroad, you cannot re-enter in H-1B status to work for the new employer.

The calculus changes sharply if your transfer is classified as a change of status rather than an extension of stay. USCIS treats a departure during a pending change of status as abandonment of that request. Even if USCIS later approves the petition, the approval comes as a consular notification rather than conferring status, meaning you’d have to apply for a new visa stamp at a U.S. consulate and re-enter before you could start working.⁶ Avoid international travel while the transfer is pending unless you have no choice and have talked to an immigration attorney about your specific case.

Your Six-Year Clock Carries Over

Transferring does not restart your H-1B clock. The standard maximum is six years: an initial three-year period plus one three-year extension.⁶ Whatever time you’ve already used comes with you. Four years in means the new employer can petition for the remaining two.

Two paths get you past six years, and both depend on progress toward a green card. If your employer (current or former) filed a labor certification or an immigrant visa petition (Form I-140) at least 365 days before your requested extension start date, you can get one-year extensions. If you have an approved I-140 but no immigrant visa number is available due to per-country backlogs, you can get three-year extensions.² For workers from countries with long green card backlogs like India and China, these extensions are often the only way to keep working in the U.S. while waiting for a visa number.

If a previous employer filed an I-140 on your behalf and it was approved for at least 180 days, that approval generally survives even if the employer later withdraws it. You keep the priority date and remain eligible for extensions beyond six years, though a new employer would need to sponsor a fresh basis for adjustment of status.⁶

One Situation the Portability Rule Won’t Save

Not every transfer is straightforward. If you currently work for a cap-exempt employer, typically a university, a nonprofit affiliated with a university, or a government research organization, and you want to move to a private, for-profit company, you hit a hard wall. Cap-exempt workers don’t count against the annual H-1B numerical limit, but a for-profit employer is cap-subject. The new employer would need to enter you in the annual H-1B lottery and win a selection before filing your petition, with a start date no earlier than the following October 1.

Transfers in other directions are simpler. Moving between two cap-subject employers doesn’t require going through the lottery again, because you were already counted. Moving from a cap-subject employer to a cap-exempt employer also avoids the lottery, because cap-exempt employers are never subject to the numerical limit. Only the cap-exempt to cap-subject move creates the lottery problem, and it catches a lot of academics off guard when they consider the private sector.

Fees and Processing Time

Transfer petitions involve multiple government fees that the employer is generally required to pay. USCIS restructured its fee schedule effective April 2024 and announced additional premium processing fee increases effective in 2026, so older figures floating around online are likely outdated.⁷ The main line items:

The base I-129 filing fee, which depends on the petition classification and is listed on the current USCIS fee schedule (Form G-1055).
The ACWIA training fee: $750 for employers with 25 or fewer full-time employees, $1,500 for employers with 26 or more. Cap-exempt nonprofits and universities are not required to pay this fee.
The Fraud Prevention and Detection fee: a flat $500 for H-1B petitions, including transfers.
The Asylum Program fee: an additional $600 for employers filing H-1B petitions, introduced under the 2024 fee rule.⁸

Employers bear these costs. Federal rules prohibit passing them on to the worker. Check the current USCIS fee schedule before filing, as amounts change with rulemaking.

Standard processing for a transfer typically runs roughly five to eight months, though times fluctuate depending on the service center and current workload. Your portability authorization keeps you legally working during that stretch, but the uncertainty can weigh on you, especially if you need to travel.

Employers who want a faster answer can file Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service. For H-1B petitions, USCIS guarantees an adjudicative action within 15 business days.⁹ That action might be an approval, a denial, or a Request for Evidence. Premium processing buys speed, not a particular outcome. The premium processing fee for an H-1B classification on Form I-129 is $2,965 as of the 2026 fee increase.⁷ Many employers pay for it as a matter of course.

Keeping Your Family’s H-4 Status Current

If your spouse or children are in the U.S. on H-4 dependent status, your transfer affects them too. Their H-4 authorization is tied to your H-1B, and when your employer changes, they need to file Form I-539 (Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status) to keep their status linked to your new petition. If multiple family members need to file, one dependent completes the I-539 and each additional dependent submits a separate Form I-539A alongside it.

USCIS has historically bundled the processing of H-4 extension applications with the underlying H-1B petition, so families got decisions around the same time. That bundling has been inconsistent in recent years. If it lapses, H-4 applications may be processed on a separate and slower track. That matters especially for H-4 spouses who hold Employment Authorization Documents, since their ability to work depends on their H-4 status remaining valid.

File the I-539 concurrently with the H-1B transfer petition. Missing this step is one of the most common oversights in the transfer process, and it can leave your family in an awkward gap where you have valid status but they technically do not. Use the most current version of the form from the USCIS website to avoid a rejection on procedural grounds.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1184 – Admission of Nonimmigrants
2
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. H-1B Specialty Occupations
3
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 62W – What is Portability and to Whom Does It Apply
4
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I-129, Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker
5
eCFR. 8 CFR 214.1
6
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. FAQs for Individuals in H-1B Nonimmigrant Status
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS to Increase Premium Processing Fees
8
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Frequently Asked Questions on the USCIS Fee Rule
9
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. How Do I Request Premium Processing?