H1B extension (wife in india)

[kalyan_iitd]

I work full time for a company, I had H1b and my wife had H4 visa with them upto October 18th, 2012.

Because of family reasons, my wife now need to go India in May and returns on September.

I am going to request my company to apply for H1B visa extension in May. Is it safe to apply for H1B visa extension while wife in India? while she coming back in september, can she face any issues at port-of-entry, since her visa expires just in 3 weeks?

can she apply same extension after she is here? or both husband and wife has to apply at same time?

is it better to plan her travel dates after i got extension approved?

any ideas/inputs on this topic could be very helpful, thank you

-Kalyan

[livliv]

That is fine. If she returns before your H1 extension is approved, her I-94 will be according to the old petition and she will have to file I-539 to extend her status before the I-94 expires. If she returns after H1 extension is approved, she can show the new approval notice and get I-94 according to the new approval notice. Visa only needs to be valid on the day of travel.