#third visa lottery for h 1b

[npzlawyersforimmigration]

Can Employers Recoup Visa Sponsorship Costs? A Closer Look at Repayment Agreements

https://visaserve.com/can-employers-recoup-visa-sponsorship-costs-a-closer-look-at-repayment-agreements/

#VisaSponsorship #RepaymentAgreement #H1BVisa #ImmigrationLaw #EmployerSponsorship #GlobalTalent #PERM #I140 #BusinessImmigration #SkilledWorkers

[shautsova]

New H1B Rules: What You Need to Know

The H-1B visa program has long been a cornerstone of U.S. immigration policy, enabling employers to hire skilled foreign workers in specialty occupations such as IT, engineering, and healthcare. However, recent changes to the H-1B visa rules have introduced new challenges and opportunities for both employers and visa applicants. In this blog post, we’ll explore the latest updates to the H-1B program and what they mean for employers, employees, and prospective applicants.

Overview of the H-1B Visa

The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. To qualify, the position must require at least a bachelor’s degree (or its equivalent) in a specific field, and the applicant must possess the necessary qualifications.

Key Changes to the H-1B Program

Recent changes to the H-1B program have been implemented with the goal of improving the integrity of the visa process, protecting U.S. workers, and ensuring that the program serves its intended purpose. Here are some of the most significant updates:

Wage-Based Selection Process

One of the most notable changes is the implementation of a wage-based selection process for H-1B cap-subject petitions. Under this new rule, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will prioritize petitions based on the wage level offered to the beneficiary. Employers offering higher wages will have a better chance of securing an H-1B visa for their employees.

Impact: This change aims to ensure that H-1B workers are compensated fairly and to discourage companies from using the program to hire lower-wage foreign workers. Employers must now carefully consider the wage level they offer when filing H-1B petitions.

Revised Definition of Specialty Occupation

The definition of a "specialty occupation" has been revised to ensure that only the most qualified applicants receive H-1B visas. The new rule clarifies that the position must require a degree in a specific specialty that is directly related to the job duties.

Impact: Employers will need to provide more detailed documentation to demonstrate that the job truly requires specialized knowledge and that the applicant’s degree is directly relevant to the role.

Employer-Employee Relationship Clarifications

The new rules also provide additional guidance on what constitutes a valid employer-employee relationship in the H-1B context. This includes requirements for demonstrating that the employer has the right to control the work of the H-1B employee, even if the employee is placed at a third-party worksite.

Impact: Employers, particularly staffing and consulting firms, must carefully document the terms of employment and demonstrate that they maintain control over the H-1B worker’s duties and work location.

Increased Scrutiny and Compliance Measures

USCIS has increased its scrutiny of H-1B petitions, particularly those involving third-party placements, and has implemented additional compliance measures. This includes more frequent site visits and requests for evidence (RFEs) to ensure that employers are complying with the terms of the H-1B program.

Impact: Employers should be prepared for increased scrutiny and ensure that they are fully compliant with all H-1B regulations. This includes maintaining accurate records and being responsive to any inquiries from USCIS.

Electronic Registration System

The H-1B cap selection process now includes an electronic registration system that requires employers to register online before submitting a full petition. This system streamlines the process and reduces the paperwork burden on employers.

Impact: The electronic registration system makes it easier for employers to participate in the H-1B lottery, but it also requires careful attention to deadlines and accuracy in the registration process.

What These Changes Mean for Employers and Applicants

The new H-1B rules reflect a broader trend toward greater oversight and stricter requirements for employment-based immigration. For employers, this means a more rigorous application process and a greater emphasis on compliance. It is crucial for companies to work closely with immigration attorneys to ensure that their H-1B petitions meet the new requirements and that they are prepared for any potential challenges.

For applicants, the changes mean that securing an H-1B visa may be more competitive than ever. Those with higher qualifications and offers of higher wages will have a better chance of being selected in the H-1B lottery. It is important for applicants to work with their employers and legal advisors to present the strongest possible case.

Customer Review

The H-1B visa program continues to be a vital pathway for skilled foreign workers to contribute to the U.S. economy. However, the recent changes to the program have introduced new complexities that both employers and applicants must navigate. By staying informed and seeking expert guidance, you can increase your chances of success in the H-1B process.

At Shautsova Law Group, PC, we specialize in helping employers and skilled workers navigate the complexities of the H-1B visa program. Whether you’re an employer looking to hire top talent or a professional seeking to work in the U.S., our experienced immigration attorneys are here to assist you every step of the way. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you with your H-1B visa needs.

[kinialohaguy]

Lawsuit Exposes Deep Corruption in H-1B Job Outsourcing Program. Outsourcing foreign labor and ignoring American graduates.  

[hrvistas2018]

Infosys

Case Background

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order in the past to promote Buy American and 'Hire American policies. Among other measures, the order directed four government departments to ensure that H1B visas are awarded to the most skilled or highest-paid applicants.

The H-1B programme offers temporary US visas that allow companies to hire highly skilled foreign professionals working in areas with shortages of qualified American workers.

In a press briefing before the order was signed, an official in the Trump administration disapproved of the lottery system of visa allotments, adding that outsourcing companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and Infosys Ltd corner the lion's share of visas.

But, if the way ahead is 'higher salary first', the annual H1B quota could be filled at a minimum salary of $75,000, with more than 50% of the quota being filled by applications where the salary is higher than $90,000. The majority of LCA (labour condition application) filings by Indian companies last year were for salary levels below $75,000.

If these companies raise salary levels for on-site staff to $75,000 to try and get a higher share of the H1B quota, their margins can be impacted by 40-120 basis points, the brokerage says (One basis point is one-hundredth of percentage point).

Another option is to hire locals, although this route too will result in lower profit margins. Of the US government follows up with laws that raise minimum salary levels, the impact will be much higher. Trump has also decided to curb H1B visa extensions.

Infosys being a large employer of H1B visa professionals in the US is largely hit by Trump's policy of removing extensions on H1B visa. Indian employees in the US who have been working for many years with Infosys and other companies will now have to go back to their country.

Due to the changes in policy and following criticism from the Donald Trump administration that the company and other outsourcing firms are unfairly taking jobs away from US workers,

Infosys Ltd plans to hire 10,000 Americans in the next two years. While this move will benefit Americans, it will lead to huge costs for Infosys and several Indian employees of Infosys will lose their jobs.

Infosys Impact

While this is the situation in the US offices of Infosys, the Indian offices have been suffering following former CEO, Vishal Sikka's resignation.

Salil Parekh has now taken over as the MD, CEO of information technology (IT) major of Infosys. He was appointed for a period of five years effective from January 2, 2018.

Notably, this is third management change in Infosys in last 4 years. As the new CEO of Infosys, one of his greatest challenges right now is to retain the talent and slow down attrition at the highest level.

Sikka's departure rattled the rank-and-file and senior level executives critical to rolling out its strategy and retaining clients.

Task at Hand

You have been appointed by Infosys Global and are required to restructure the entire workforce in a way that maximum talent is retained and minimum costs are incurred.

Amongst other deliverables, you must include: -

Restructuring Plan

Retention strategies for Indian employees

Accommodating the movement of US Infosys employees.

Deliverable

Make a PowerPoint Presentation.

Submission Time: 4:25 P.M.

[perfectirishgifts]

H-1B Visa Denial Rates Remain High But Dropped In 3rd Quarter

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/h-1b-visa-denial-rates-remain-high-but-dropped-in-3rd-quarter/

H-1B Visa Denial Rates Remain High But Dropped In 3rd Quarter

An empty entrance at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) field office in Tukwila, … [] Washington, on March 3, 2020. (Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)

A new analysis finds denials for H-1B petitions have remained at high levels compared to previous years. However, the denial rate for new H-1B petitions dropped in the third quarter of FY 2020 due to the way U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) decides on petitions selected for the annual H-1B lottery.

“The denial rate for new H-1B petitions for initial employment rose from 6% in FY 2015 to 21% through the third quarter of FY 2020,” according to a new analysis from the National Foundation for American Policy. “This is in line with the 21% denial rate for H-1B petitions for initial employment in FY 2019 and the 24% denial rate in FY 2018.” The report, based on USCIS data from the H-1B Employer Data Hub, focused on H-1B petitions for “initial” employment, which are used primarily for new employment, typically a case that would count against the H-1B annual cap or limit (i.e., chosen in the annual lottery).

USCIS processing choices, not changes in adjudication standards, resulted in a drop in the H-1B denial rate in the third quarter of FY 2020. “In the third quarter of FY 2020, the denial rate for H-1B petitions for initial employment was 7%, similar to the denial rate of 10% in the third quarter of FY 2019,” according to the analysis. “That is much lower than the denial rate in other quarters because the third quarter of a fiscal year (April, May and June) includes the first set of adjudications of H-1B ‘cap’ cases – and in both FY 2019 and FY 2020, USCIS approved or denied those petitions that adjudicators decided on quickly (in April, May and June) and granted Requests for Evidence (RFEs) or held other applications for later in the fiscal year.”

USCIS data on Requests for Evidence confirm this, showing that only 20% of the completed H-1B cases had a Request for Evidence in the third quarter of FY 2020, compared to 47% in the first quarter of FY 2020. The same pattern was seen in FY 2019 when 27% of completed cases had a Request for Evidence in the third quarter compared to 60% in the first quarter of FY 2019.

Examining data on the 25 companies with the most H-1B petitions approved for initial employment in FY 2019, the analysis found:

–        “The recent top 25 employers of new H-1B visa holders continued to have higher denial rates through the first three quarters of FY 2020 than in FY 2015 (i.e., before the Trump administration). Overall, 24 of the top 25 employers of new H-1B professionals had higher denial rates for H-1B petitions for initial employment in FY 2020 (through the third quarter) than in FY 2015.

–     “13 of the 25 top companies had H-1B denial rates for initial employment at least 9 percentage points higher in FY 2020 (through the third quarter) than in FY 2015. That included large technology companies Cisco and Uber.

–     “The highest denial rates continue to be for companies that provide information technology or other business services to American companies. The data indicate USCIS established a different standard for deciding cases for companies that provide information technology (IT) services. Immigration law does not have a different standard for adjudications based on the type of firm or the location where work will be performed.

–     “The denial rate for initial employment through the third quarter of FY 2020 when compared to FY 2015 increased by 14 percentage points or more for 10 major companies that provide information technology (IT) services or other business consulting services.

–     “Denial rates for initial employment for H-1B petitions were generally between 1% and 5% in FY 2015 for the top employers of H-1B professionals, compared to denials rates that mostly ranged from 9% to as high as 56% through the first three quarters of FY 2020. In FY 2015, 16 of the 25 top companies had denial rates of 2% or lower for H-1B petitions for initial employment.”

When data become available for the fourth quarter (July, August and September) of FY 2020, and the first and second quarters of FY 2021, we should know what impact USCIS rescinding certain memos and issuing a new policy memo has on H-1B denial rates. The new memo was part of a settlement with the business group ITServe Alliance. Attorneys and companies blamed the higher denial rates, particularly for IT services companies, on the memos.

In its final months, the Trump administration attempted to lock in its policies on H-1B visas through two regulations that companies believed would have forced many existing H-1B visa holders, as well as international students, to no longer qualify for H-1B status. On December 1, 2020, a federal judge declared the administration violated the law when it published the regulations to restrict H-1B visas. The DOL rule took effect on October 8, 2020, and the DHS rule would have been effective December 7, 2020. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White’s order vacated the regulations in a ruling that was binding nationwide.

Companies are eager to learn whether the Biden administration’s policies will result in lower denial rates for H-1B petitions. The numbers will tell the tale.

From Enterprise Tech in Perfectirishgifts

[go-redgirl]

Trump Rewrites H-1B Program to Help American White-Collar Workers

President Donald Trump’s deputies have launched a fundamental reform of the H-1B visa system to protect American graduates from outsourcing — despite furious opposition from donors and leaders from Silicon Valley, Fortune 500 companies, and coastal investors.

The reform will end the annual award of 85,000 H-1B visas by lottery, which has been gamed by companies to import foreign workers at wages far below the salaries needed by American professionals. Instead, the visas will be offered to the companies that compete to offer the highest salaries, preventing employers from undercutting American graduates.

“The Trump administration is continuing to deliver on its promise to protect the American worker while strengthening the economy,” said Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli. “The current use of random selection to allocate H-1B visas … hurts American workers by bringing in relatively lower-paid foreign labor at the expense of the American workforce.”

“We have seen more progress in the last few weeks than we’ve seen in the last 30 years,” said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers, which opposes the H-1B and other visa worker programs. He continued:

If you look at it on the whole, Trump is side with working Americans. Look at the beginning of his administration when he canceled the Trans-Pacific Partnership. All the elites wanted that — he said no. He allowed labor into [negotiations about] NAFTA II — the USMCA — and they made a better deal for working man and women. On August 3, for the Tennessee Valley Authority, he used the authority he had to protect those white-collar jobs [from H-1B outsourcing]. So he’s clearly made a choice between the elites and working men and women.

Trump has pushed forward with popular and dramatic reforms of the visa worker programs since June, with additional actions taken in August and early October.

The actions may be helping his poll ratings among vital white-collar graduates in two critical states: North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

For example, Monmouth University’s early October poll showed Trump getting 38 percent among white college graduates, while Biden had 57 percent. That is down slightly from a September 2 poll that showed Trump was getting 40 percent but is above Monmouth’s July poll that showed Trump getting only 34 percent of white college voters.

On October 13, Monmouth showed Trump was getting 48 percent of white college graduates in North Carolina, up from 42 percent on September 3.

Both states have been hit hard by H-1B outsourcing, giving Trump a chance to champion the very popular economic self-interest of college graduates.

“There are many financial institutions in North Carolina that are abusing cheap labor and H-1Bs,” Jay Palmer, a civil rights activist who works with abused visa workers, told Breitbart News. He continued:

Charlotte, N.C., is the hotbed of visa fraud. They’re laying off American workers left and right because there is so much cheap [foreign] labor in North Carolina … 

They’re hiring anybody through third-party consulting companies, and they are paying them on 1099s [as gig workers]  to work at the financial institutions. 

They’re replacing American workers such as risk managers and actuaries — any jobs they can fill with cheap labor. It’s horrible. You don’t even know how bad it is.

But other estimates say 900,000 jobs are allocated to H-1B workers. In addition, at least another 600,000 foreign workers hold white-collar jobs after being imported via other pipelines, dubbed Optional Practical Training (OPT), L-1, J-1, TN, Curricular Practical Training (CPT), and H4EAD.

Some of these million-plus foreign workers stay in the United States until they are trained by Americans and can take the white-collar jobs back to India.

But most of these foreign workers come from low-tier universities and work for many years at low wages in mid-skill jobs in the hope or expectation of getting green cards and citizenship delivered via a current or future employer. For example, at least 300,000 Indian H-1B workers are now working while waiting for employer-sponsored green cards. Many more visa workers work as gig workers for little-known subcontractors in the hopes of getting into the H-1B program so they can get citizenship.

CEOs at Fortune 500 companies quietly outsource many of their full-time jobs to this huge “Green Card Workforce,” so cutting costs and boosting near-term stock values for shareholders and C-Suite executives.

This green card outsourcing prevents many American graduates from getting paid jobs where they can use the degrees they earned with borrowed tuition money. Also, outsourcing pushes many experienced American professionals from mid-career jobs, while millions more face lower salaries and persistent job insecurity.

Corporate diversity reports, university reports, and census data show that large slices of the nation’s technology workforce consist of ill-paid, ill-treated foreign workers who have the same job security and professional authority as migrant stoop workers in U.S. fields.

The large number of foreign workers are used to minimize U.S. professionals’ role and prevent the formation of innovative companies. The foreigners’ limited skills and lack of workplace rights help to reduce productivity, the quality of software, and to slow research.

But this labor policy also delivers workplace stability, cheaper graduates, and higher stock values to the current executives and leading shareholders of the Fortune 500 companies.

A statement from the Department of Homeland Security described the new rule:

WASHINGTON —Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced the transmission to the Federal Register of a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that would prioritize the selection of H-1B registrations (or petitions, if the registration process is suspended) based on corresponding wage levels in order to better protect the economic interests of U.S. workers, while still allowing U.S. employers to meet their personnel needs and remain globally competitive.

Modifying the H-1B cap selection process by replacing the random selection process with a wage-level-based selection process is a better way to allocate H-1Bs when demand exceeds supply. If finalized as proposed, this new selection process would incentivize employers to offer higher wages or petition for positions requiring higher skills and higher-skilled workers instead of using the program to fill relatively lower-paid vacancies.

…

This effort would only affect H-1B registrations submitted by prospective petitioners seeking to file H-1B cap-subject petitions. It would be implemented for both the H-1B regular cap and the H-1B advanced degree exemption, but would not change the order of selection between the two as established by the H-1B registration requirement final rule.

DHS will open a public comment period once the NPRM is published in the Federal Register. Interested parties will have 30 days to submit comments relevant to the proposed rule and 60 days to submit comments relevant to the proposed information collection. The Department will review all properly submitted comments, consider them carefully, and draft responses before issuing a final rule.

In contrast to Trump’s partial populism, Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign theme claims, “We are in a battle for the soul of this nation.”

“When Biden talks about ‘Saving the Soul of America,’ he is whistling through a cemetery,” responded Lynn:

Under globalists like Biden, the neoliberals have destroyed of hundreds of thousands of good middle-class and upper-middle-class jobs. That is what killed the American dream. The American Dream is,  if you want to find it, you go to the cemetery. That’s where you’re gonna find the people have actually lived it. If you’re a millennial, looking to get into the job market, or you’re a boomer getting ready to retire, you’re very insecure right now … I wish Biden would be more concerned about the body.

Biden is backed by companies that have replaced Americans with H-1Bs, he said. “One need only look at the support that he’s been getting from Google, Facebook, and Twitter … it is obvious.”

“This is why it is so critical that if Vice President Biden wins in November, he follows through on his commitment to reforming our failed immigration system,” wrote Todd Schulte, director of the FWD.us advocacy group. The group was created in 2013 by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and other coastal investors who were hoping to get the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” amnesty through Congress.

The bill would have dramatically accelerated the inflow of consumers, renters, and workers into the U.S. economy and also allowed an unlimited inflow of foreign postgraduates. “Because the bill would increase the rate of growth of the labor force, average wages would be held down in the first decade after enactment,” said a report by the Congressional Budget Office.

If Biden “follows through on his commitment to reforming our failed immigration system … We can create a streamlined modern visa system so that people who want to come to contribute or unify their families can do so,” Schulte wrote October 28.

Biden’s 2020 platform promises to let companies import more visa workers, let mayors import a new class of visa workers, and allow an unlimited flow of foreign graduates through U.S. universities and into white-collar jobs. The plan says Biden would “exempt from any cap [the] recent graduates of Ph.D. programs in STEM fields.”

In contrast, Trump is likely to reject migrants, narrow asylum claims yet further, and fund the transfer of migrants waiting in Mexico back to Latin American countries. His 2020 plan offers broadly popular — but quite limited — pro-American restrictions on migration and visa workers. For example, in many speeches, Trump generally ignores the economic impact of blue-collar and white-collar migration on Americans while stressing issues of crime, outsiders, diseases, or welfare, even though his low-immigration policies have been a popular boon to Americans.

Open-ended legal migration is praised by business and progressives partly because migrants’ arrival helps transfer wealth from wage-earners to stockholders.

Migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled people, exploit stoop labor in the fields, short-change labor in the cities, impose tight control on American professionals, centralize technological innovation, undermine labor rights, and to get many progressive reporters to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities.

Neal Muro@·May 20@ NewMuroDCThe inflow of India's visa-workers creates a huge 'bonded labor' workforce that empowers Fortune 500 CEOs & shrivels professionalism, say US/India tech-professionals. "We’ve lost our competitive, innovative advantage because of it," says US manager. #H1B

[polixy]

Key facts about U.S. immigration policies and proposed changes — UPDATE, FOR PREVIEW ONLY

Key facts about U.S. immigration policies and proposed changes — UPDATE, FOR PREVIEW ONLY;

(From left, Scott Olson; Salwan Georges/The Washington Post; and Jessica Hill/For The Washington Post, all via Getty Images)

Roughly 34 million lawful immigrants live in the United States. Many live and work in the country after receiving lawful permanent residence (also known as a green card), while others receive temporary visas available to students and workers. In addition, roughly 1 million unauthorized immigrants have temporary permission to live and work in the U.S. through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs.

Want to know more about immigration to the U.S.?

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For years, proposals have sought to shift the nation’s immigration system away from its current emphasis on family reunification and employment-based migration, and toward a points-based system that prioritizes the admission of immigrants with certain education and employment qualifications.

The Trump administration has announced a proposal that would grant green cards to immigrants who meet requirements related to education, age and English-speaking ability. The administration has previously proposed regulation that would deny immigrants entry to the U.S. or lawful permanent residence if they are likely to use Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps) and other forms of public assistance. Here are key details about existing U.S. immigration programs:

Family-based immigration

In fiscal 2017, 748,746 people received family-based U.S. lawful permanent residence. The program allows someone to receive a green card if they already have a spouse, child, sibling or parent living in the country with U.S. citizenship or, in some cases, a green card. Immigrants from countries with large numbers of applicants often wait for years to receive a green card because a single country can account for no more than 7% of all green cards issued annually. President Donald Trump said his legislation, when proposed, would prioritize family-based green cards to immediate family members. Today, family-based immigration – referred to by some as “chain migration” – is the most common way people gain green cards, in recent years accounting for about two-thirds of the more than 1 million people who receive them annually. This share could decline to about one-third under the president’s proposal.

Refugee admissions

The U.S. admitted 22,491 refugees in fiscal 2018, down from 53,716 in fiscal 2017 – and about half of the 84,995 refugees admitted in fiscal 2016. This decline reflects a lower admissions cap. For fiscal 2019, refugee admissions have been capped at 30,000, the lowest since Congress created the modern refugee program in 1980 for those fleeing persecution in their home countries. One of Trump’s first acts as president in 2017 was to freeze refugee admissions, citing security concerns. Admissions from most countries eventually restarted, though applicants from 11 nations deemed “high risk” by the administration were admitted on a case-by-case basis. In January 2018, refugee admissions resumed for all countries.

Employment-based green cards

In fiscal 2017, 137,855 employment-based green cards were awarded to foreign workers and their families. The Trump administration’s points-based plan would increase the number of green cards granted due to having certain skills. The new system would eliminate a green card for immigrant investors who put money into commercial U.S. enterprises that are intended to create jobs or benefit the economy. This path to a green card, the EB-5 program, has drawn criticism from some lawmakers.

Diversity visas

Each year, about 50,000 people receive green cards through the U.S. diversity visa program, also known as the visa lottery. Since the program began in 1995, more than 1 million immigrants have received green cards through the lottery. Trump has said he wants to eliminate the program, which seeks to diversify the U.S. immigrant population by granting visas to underrepresented nations. Citizens of countries with the most legal immigrant arrivals in recent years – such as Mexico, Canada, China and India – are not eligible to apply. Trump has proposed to eliminate the program as part of his proposal to overhaul how green cards are awarded.

H-1B visas

In fiscal 2017, 179,049 high-skilled foreign workers received H-1B visas. As the nation’s biggest temporary employment visa program, H-1B visas accounted for about a quarter (23%) of all temporary visas for employment issued in 2017. In all, more than 1.6 million H-1B visas were issued from fiscal years 2007 to 2017. The denial rate of H-1B visa applications increased in 2019 under the Trump administration. Meanwhile, more H-1B visas went to immigrants with a U.S. master’s degree or higher. The administration has also said it plans to restrict work permits for spouses of H-1B holders.

Temporary permissions

A relatively small number of unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. under unusual circumstances have received temporary legal permission to stay in the country. One key distinction for this group of immigrants is that, despite having received permission to live in the U.S., most don’t have a path to gain lawful permanent residence. The following two programs are examples of this:

DACA

About 700,000 unauthorized immigrants had temporary work permits and protection from deportation through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals as of Sept. 5, 2017. The program has been central to negotiations as Congress debates changes to U.S. immigration law. Trump ordered an end to the program in September 2017. However, DACA enrollees can remain in the program while federal courts consider cases regarding its future, though the administration is not required to accept new applicants. The U.S. Supreme Court may consider the issue in 2019.

Temporary Protected Status

About 320,000 immigrants from 10 nations have permission to live and work in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) because war, hurricanes or other disasters in their home countries could make it dangerous for them to return. They face an uncertain future in the U.S. The Trump administration has said it will not renew the program for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan, who together account for about 98% of enrolled immigrants. However, decisions to end TPS for these countries have been challenged in federal courts, and the government has now extended TPS for all countries into 2020. Only those from Syria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen have received TPS extensions with the possibility of future renewals.

Note: This is an update of a post originally published Feb. 26, 2018.

; Blog – Pew Research Center; https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/11/08/key-facts-about-u-s-immigration-policies-and-proposed-changes-update-for-preview-only/; ; November 8, 2019 at 10:28AM

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/business/finance/us-receives-2-lakh-h-1b-applications/

US receives 2 lakh H-1B applications

MUMBAI: The number of applications for the H-1B visa has risen slightly over last year, by a little over 10,000 to close at 2.01 lakh for the current season 2019-20 (fiscal year 2020). The date for accepting applications had commenced on April 1. The H-1B visas are relied upon heavily by the Indian tech sector for servicing clients in the US.

The last two years had shown a slight decline in the number of applications. The rise now reflected, even if minuscule, shows that despite the restrictive policies of the Trump administration, interest in this work visa has not waned, even though large Indian tech companies have over the past few years ramped up hiring of locals in the US.

For the fiscal 2020 season, which would permit successful visa applicants to work in the US earliest from October 1, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) received 2.01 lakh applications, a slight rise of 5%, as against 1.90 lakh applications last season. This was disclosed by the USCIS in a release issued late night on April 11.

On April 5, the agency had announced that it had received a sufficient number of H-1B cap applications to reach the annual ‘regular’ quota of 65,000. It had also announced that USCIS would determine if it had received a sufficient number of applications to meet the masters’ cap.

Annually only 65,000 visas are allotted under the regular cap (also known as general quota) and an additional 20,000 visas under the master’s cap (for those having an advanced degree from US universities). For last filing season, which had closed on April 6, 2018, USCIS had later announced that it had got 95,885 applications which were eligible for Masters cap. It has not yet disclosed this figure for the current season.

This is the first lottery, that has been subject to the reversal process announced by the USCIS on January 30, meant to give those with a US masters’ (or higher degree) a better chance of winning the lottery. This means, USCIS first conducted the selection process for all H-1B cap applications, including those that may have been eligible for the masters’ cap. Then, it conducted a selection for those eligible for masters’ cap.

“This year, at least 42% of cap filings will be selected against the quota of 85,000, though USCIS typically accepts more than the annual quota to account for cases that are ultimately denied or withdrawn. The odds for advanced-degree cases are somewhat higher because these filings get a second chance for selection if they are not chosen in the initial lottery,” states Fragomen, a global firm specialising in immigration laws.

Each year, since 2013-14, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has had to resort to a lottery mechanism, as the number of applications far exceeded the annual quotas. The number of applications had hit a peak in 2016-17 with 2.36 lakh applications. If current year’s figures are compared with this peak statistic it is a decline of 15% in the number of H-1B applications. USCIS will now begin the process of rejecting and returning all unselected applications with their filing fees unless the applications violated the rules against multiple filing.

Selection in the lottery process does not mean an automatic grant of the H-1B visa. In recent years, USCIS has been increasing the number of inquiries during processing of visa applications, referred to as requests for evidence (RFEs). Based on the evidence submitted, it can seek to reject the application.

Data for the first quarter of US fiscal 2019 (ie: three months ended December 2018) shows that 60% of all completed H-1B cases, had been issued RFEs. This is significant, considering that only 38% of all completed H-1B applications received RFEs during fiscal 2018 (12 month period ended September 2018) and 21.4% in the previous fiscal.

The top three reasons for denials of H-1B applications according to USCIS are inability by the sponsoring employer to establish that the position is a speciality occupation, inability to substantiate a valid employer-employee relationship (including the right to control work) and lack of evidence of specific assignment at third party sites for the entire visa-duration requested. Extreme vetting of applications, is likely to continue, say immigration experts.

[rposervices]

New H-1B visa rules get modest praise from Silicon Valley

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration's new rules for a US visa program widely used for technology workers are getting cautious praise from Silicon Valley amid surging demand for high-skill employees. The H-1B visa programme, which admits some 85,000 foreign nationals each year, will give higher priority to people with post-graduate degrees from US universities, under a final rule published in January by the Department of Homeland Security. "US employers seeking to employ foreign workers with a US master's or higher degree will have a greater chance of selection in the H-1B lottery" under the new rule, said Francis Cissna, director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in announcing the change on January 30. The changes come with the tech industry pleading for more immigrants to fill key skilled positions, and responds in part of concerns that the program has been exploited by some tech giants and outsourcing firms to depress wages and displace US employees. "The changes are, on the whole, a positive step in the right direction," said Todd Schulte of the immigration reform group FWD.us backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and others in the industry. Ed Black of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents several major tech firms, said the program has not always been administered as well as it could have been. "We are hopeful something in the newly announced revisions will improve efficiency, but it's too soon to say what the impact will be in practice," Black said. The H-1B program, in place since 1990, has been used for a variety of skilled occupations including nurses and pastry chefs, but in recent years two-thirds have been for computer-related jobs and three-fourths of the employees have come from India. Because visa-holders can stay up to six years, the number currently living in the United States is estimated at more than half a million. Ron Hira, a Howard University political scientist who has followed the visa program for two decades, said it has been exploited by some large tech companies and outsourcing firms to keep wages down and in some cases displace American employees. Hira said the visas have not been allocated to the "most pressing needs" of the labor market and that "the typical H-1B employee is working in a back office through an outsourcer." He said that the reform "inches us a little closet to a better quality pool, but it's still not selecting the 'best and brightest' -- you could reform it much better." Hira said the system has been disappointing up to now because of large outsourcing firms that flood the system with thousands of applications, and some Silicon valley firms that use it to keep wages down. A US Labour Department complaint alleged that Oracle discriminated against some Americans by bringing in large numbers of H-1B visa holders, who were paid less than US nationals. The new DHS rule reverses the order of two lotteries for H-1B visas, by selecting the first 65,000 from the pool of all applications, and subsequently choosing 20,000 with advances degrees. Officials expect this will mean an increase of some 5,000, or 16 percent, for advanced degree-holders. Hira said this potentially changes the mix of visa holders to positions with higher pay and skill levels. William Kerr, a Harvard professor who heads the university's Future of Work initiative, agreed the changes could slightly shift the mix of those receiving H-1B visas to bring in more people with advanced skills. "It's a modest change in a system in a need of substantial reworking, but I support the change," he said. Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank focused on the sector, said the changes should be viewed in the context of Trump administration rhetoric about shutting out foreigners and hiring more Americans. "People were talking about shutting down this program and making it hard for companies to use (visa holders) at all, so it could have been a lot worse," Atkinson said. The reform is a "reasonable compromise," Atkinson said. The change, he said, "sends a nice message to foreigners who have been dropping their enrollment in US universities and who were feeling uncertainty about Trump was going to do." This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed. Read the full article

[npzlawyersforimmigration]

Navigating Options for F1 Students with Terminated SEVIS Records

https://visaserve.com/navigating-options-for-f1-students-with-terminated-sevis-records/

#F1Visa #SEVIS #Nonimmigrant #StudentVisa #InternationalStudents #StudyintheUSA #ImmigrationLaw #Reinstatement #VisaOptions

[omgstupendousbouquetbasement]

Reform of US Skilled-worker Visa Program Wins Praise

The Trump administration's new rules for a U.S. visa program widely used for technology workers are getting cautious praise from Silicon Valley amid surging demand for high-skill employees.    The H-1B visa program, which admits 85,000 foreign nationals each year, will give higher priority to people with postgraduate degrees from U.S. universities, under a final rule the Department of Homeland Security published in January.    "U.S. employers seeking to employ foreign workers with a U.S. master's or higher degree will have a greater chance of selection in the H-1B lottery" under the new rule, said Francis Cissna, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, in announcing the change Jan. 30.    The changes come with the tech industry's plea for more immigrants to fill key skilled positions, and respond in part to concerns that the program has been exploited by some tech giants and outsourcing firms to depress wages and displace U.S. employees. "The changes are, on the whole, a positive step," said Todd Schulte of the immigration reform group FWD.us backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and others in the industry.  Flaws in administration   Ed Black of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents several major tech firms, said the program has not always been administered as well as it could have been.    "We are hopeful something in the newly announced revisions will improve efficiency, but it's too soon to say what the impact will be," Black said.    The H-1B program, in place since 1990, has been used for a variety of skilled occupations including nurses and pastry chefs, but in recent years two-thirds have been for computer-related jobs and three-fourths of the employees have come from India. Because visa holders can stay up to six years, the number currently living in the United States is estimated at more than half a million.    Ron Hira, a Howard University political scientist who has followed the visa program for two decades, said it has been exploited by some large tech companies and outsourcing firms to keep wages down and in some cases displace American employees.   Hira said the visas have not been allocated to the "most pressing needs" of the labor market and that "the typical H-1B employee is working in a back office through an outsourcer."    He said that the reform "inches us a little closer  to a better-quality pool, but it's still not selecting the 'best and brightest' — you could reform it much better."    Hira said the system has been disappointing up to now because of large outsourcing firms that flood the system with thousands of applications, and some Silicon valley firms that use it to keep wages down.    A U.S. Labor Department complaint alleged that Oracle discriminated against some Americans by bringing in large numbers of H-1B visa holders, who were paid less than U.S. nationals.    The new DHS rule reverses the order of two lotteries for H-1B visas, by selecting the first 65,000 from the pool of all applications, and subsequently choosing 20,000 with advanced degrees.    Officials expect this will mean an increase of 5,000, or 16 percent, for holders of advanced degrees.    Hira said this potentially changes the mix of visa holders to positions with higher pay and skill levels.  'Modest' but positive shift seen   William Kerr, a Harvard University professor who heads the university's Future of Work initiative, agreed the changes could slightly shift the mix of those receiving H-1B visas to bring in more people with advanced skills. "It's a modest change in a system in a need of substantial reworking, but I support the change," he said.    Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank focused on the sector, said the changes should be viewed in the context of Trump administration rhetoric about shutting out foreigners and hiring more Americans.    "People were talking about shutting down this program and making it hard for companies to use [visa holders] at all, so it could have been a lot worse," Atkinson said.    The reform is a "reasonable compromise," Atkinson said.    The change, he said, "sends a nice message to foreigners who have been dropping their enrollment in U.S. universities and who were feeling uncertainty about what Trump was going to do."   from Blogger http://bit.ly/2WTU9iz via IFTTT

[payprosalaska]

2019 Workplace Immigration Outlook Indicates More of the Same

Page Content

​The Trump administration’s policies on employment-based immigration will continue to stymie organizations seeking to hire foreign national talent in 2019.

The new year will likely be defined by:

Silent Wall’ Will Remain

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will continue to implement policies emanating from President Donald Trump’s Buy American and Hire American executive order, said Beth Carlson, an immigration attorney and counsel in the Minneapolis office of Faegre Baker Daniels.      

Since 2017, the agency has issued policy memos:

“Although the mainstream media focuses on the border wall and other immigration issues of interest to the general public, U.S. employers and their foreign national employees will continue to be impacted by this ‘silent wall’ of heightened scrutiny, denials and backlogs in processing, and adjudication of work visas and permanent residence applications,” Carlson said.

“Expect the high denial rates to continue,” said Stuart Anderson, the executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based public-policy organization. “Attorneys and employers report multiple denials based on USCIS claiming a job is not in a specialty occupation or that it fails to meet the definition of an employer/employee relationship. Many H-1B visa holders are afraid to change jobs because of administration policies. They fear the increase in denials and processing times that could leave them out of status.”

Anderson said that he expects more of the same from the administration this year because USCIS will “keep viewing high-skilled, foreign-born professionals more as threats to U.S. workers than as assets to the U.S. economy.”

The main challenge for employers in 2019 will be “the systematic stagnation that has been imposed globally throughout all aspects of the immigration pipeline, including reductions in premium processing, increased wait times for employment authorization documents, increased scrutiny of all applications and increased costs to employers,” said Leon Fresco, an immigration attorney in Holland & Knight’s Washington, D.C., office.

[SHRM members-only online discussion platform: SHRM Connect]

Technical Changes Drive Policy

The standards that USCIS officers use to approve or deny visa petitions—and those officers’ interpretations of them—will continue to have a significant impact on employers, said Austin T. Fragomen Jr., founder and chairman of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, a New York City-based global immigration law firm.

“Each one of the employment-based visa categories have certain key terms which determine eligibility. For H-1Bs you must be working in a ‘specialty occupation’; L-1Bs must have ‘specialized knowledge,’ ” he explained. “The way these terms are interpreted can have a profound impact. The interpretation is getting more restrictive and focused, making it much more difficult for workers to qualify in the various visa categories.”

Fragomen cited as an example that, previously, petitioning for a software developer with a degree in computer science didn’t draw any attention. But now that request is questioned or denied for failure to prove specialty occupation because a developer could potentially have more than one type of degree.

RFEs and denials issued for H-1B visa petitions have risen considerably since President Trump issued the Buy American and Hire American executive order in April 2017.

“USCIS has announced that they will produce a guidance memo on H-1B adjudication standards this year, to support what their officers have been doing,” Fragomen said. “We could see something like that for L visas as well.” The agency could issue more guidance on prevailing wages and third-party offsite employment to mitigate displacement of U.S. workers through outsourcing, he added.

More Regulations

Fragomen said that the administration is “unlikely to do more with executive orders in 2019—that just seems to lead to instant litigation,” and instead will stick to regulatory guidance and rulemaking. 

H-1B visas will continue to be a focus for regulation in 2019. Employers are currently awaiting White House review of a USCIS final rule that will require employers to register online to be randomly selected before they submit visa petitions under the annual H-1B cap. The rule would also reverse the order of the H-1B lottery to allocate more visas to individuals with advanced degrees from U.S. universities.

The agency has proposed having the new system finalized and in place for the fiscal year (FY) 2020 filing deadline on April 1, but it has also acknowledged that it may not be feasible to do so. Experts recommend organizations continue to work on H-1B cap preparation as usual. “Given all the uncertainty, I would advise employers to prepare cases as if the rule will not be ready this season,” said Tahmina Watson, an immigration attorney and owner of Seattle-based Watson Immigration Law. “Employers should plan for the possibility that they will need to submit a full H-1B cap petition and supporting evidence for each worker, as in years past. Then if the rule does go into effect, they are still meeting all of the requirements.”

In addition, USCIS plans to propose rescinding employment authorization documents (EADs) for the H-4 spouses of H-1B workers waiting for green cards. “The H-4 EAD regulation will be one of the biggest changes in 2019,” Fresco said.

Anderson added that the proposed rule, which would remove work authorization for up to 100,000 individuals, “would prompt a flood of comments in response and a lawsuit.”

Not Much Expected from Congress

Experts don’t believe that lawmakers will produce much significant legislation this year—certainly not the comprehensive overhaul many agree is needed to fix the country’s dysfunctional immigration system. “Most of the reform we will see this year on workplace immigration will come from the federal agencies, not Congress,” said Rebecca Peters, senior advisor of government affairs at the Society for Human Resource Management.

She added that the House Judiciary Committee is likely to hold oversight hearings on the administration’s immigration enforcement and regulatory actions. “The latter may include agency actions on issues such as requests for evidence that hinder employers’ ability to access global talent,” she said.

Limited measures are a possibility, such as providing legal status for DACA beneficiaries in exchange for border security funding. “Congress will aim to address permanent legal status and work authorization for ‘Dreamers,’ ” Peters said. “Should such legislation ever be enacted, it may serve as a gateway for Congress to consider other workplace immigration issues where bipartisan agreement is possible. This may include legislation to modernize workplace immigration that impacts employers’ ability to access global talent, like eliminating the per-country limits on employment-based green cards, addressing access to workplace visas and work authorization of new hires with an E-Verify mandate.”

Legislation expanding the number of H-2B seasonal guest-worker visas also has support in both parties and could also be introduced. Democrats have already filed legislation that would give temporary legal status to undocumented immigrant farmworkers, a key labor issue for an industry that relies heavily on foreign national employees who lack work authorization.

Court Decisions Could Be Momentous

Much of the Trump administration’s agenda on immigration is tied up in litigation. The most high-profile example of this, the decision to end DACA, is pending in three federal appeals courts.

Employers had been waiting to see if the U.S. Supreme Court intended to intervene in the issue, but it now appears likely that it will not during its current term, resulting in a continuation of the program until sometime after the court’s next term begins Oct. 1.

A U.S. Supreme Court decision on the fate of DACA—if and when it comes—will have a reverberating effect on the employment immigration landscape.

“The DACA decision from the Supreme Court will be important because it deals with the fundamental question of the power of the president to issue these executive orders and by implication the agency’s administrative guidance memos,” Fragomen said. “The lead DACA case, Regents of the University of California v. DHS, began when Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions issued a decree revoking the program. The Ninth Circuit upheld the interpretation that the government’s revocation of DACA was an ‘arbitrary and capricious’ act and therefore unlawful. The court will deal specifically with the power of the executive branch to make broad pronouncements without any kind of rulemaking or legislative process.”

Courts will also decide challenges to the administration’s decision to end TPS for the nationals of several countries, specifically El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan. The protected status of 325,000 individuals overall is in question, including 57,000 from Honduras.

“The construction, restaurant, food services and landscaping industries will be hit the hardest—particularly in California, Texas, New York, Florida, Maryland and Virginia.,” said Guillermo Cantor, research director for the Washington, D.C.-based American Immigration Council.

Anderson noted that another case potentially before the high court, Kisor v. Wilkie, could change how much deference USCIS officials are given to interpret requirements that go beyond a plain reading of the statute or an agency’s own policy memos. The outcome will have implications for companies considering litigation against the agency over its more restrictive interpretation of visa eligibility.

Additional Areas to Watch in 2019

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will keep to the stepped-up pace of workplace enforcement seen in 2018. Worksite investigations rose by more than 300 percent last year, and the agency set a 10-year high for the number of I-9 audits conducted and criminal charges filed.

ICE opened 6,848 worksite investigations in FY 2018, compared to 1,691 in the previous 12 months, and it initiated 5,981 I-9 audits, compared to 1,360 in FY 2017. More than 2,300 people were arrested at work in FY 2018―more than seven times the amount in the previous year.

International student enrollment at U.S. colleges declined in 2018 and may drop more in 2019. Anderson said that a proposed rule to establish a maximum period of authorized stay for F-1 students could be published this year. “Replacing the current ‘duration of status’ for international students with a ‘maximum period of authorized stay,’ as the potential rule would do, would be another administration policy that would increase uncertainty and discourage international students from coming to the United States.”

Another blow to students, universities and employers would be in store if the Trump administration decides to end or limit Optional Practical Training for students in science, technology, engineering and math fields, as it has talked about doing.

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[stopkingobama]

Trump Restricts Immigration Program That Took This American’s Job

Photo: White House

After years in private business, Kurt Ho had finally found a rewarding information technology job, working for a public hospital in Northern California, ensuring vital systems—such as fetal health monitors—were functioning properly.

In October, Ho learned his job at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center was being outsourced to a company in India, called HCL Technologies.

Ho was told he could stay on the job, get paid for four more months, and earn a bonus if he trained his replacement. Ho’s dream job lasted less than three years.

“I was very surprised because this is a hospital—we are not talking about something you can easily outsource,” Ho, 58, told The Daily Signal in an interview, just a few weeks after his last day of work, Feb. 28. “This is very important work. You are talking about patients’ lives here. So I absolutely want my replacement to do well for the patients and their families, for the doctors—who depend on the service. That’s what we wish for.”

Ho, along with about 80 of his IT co-workers, lost his job as a result of loopholes in a high-skilled visa program—known as H-1B—that allows U.S. companies to fire Americans and replace them with cheaper, temporary workers.

For Ho, that unfortunate designation is not the worst part. Ho is in the prime of his career—competent and able, he says. Facing his 12-year-old daughter is another matter.

“I am trying to get her to go into the STEM program at school, to pursue science and technology like I did,” said Ho, a U.S. citizen who immigrated here from Malaysia in 1989. “But she looks at me and says, ‘They shipped your job to India.’ I am setting a bad example for her. She is discouraged. She says she is thinking about dancing now.”

According to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which recently profiled another University of California, San Francisco Medical Center employee who lost his job, outsourcing the IT work could save $30 million for taxpayers over the next five years. The state-run university has a $5.9 billion annual budget.

Becoming a ‘Cheap Labor Program’

Experts say most companies use H-1B visas properly—to employ highly-skilled foreign guest workers in sectors Americans cannot fully serve. But stories of abuse, such as Ho’s, have inspired a bipartisan coalition in Congress, and the president, to push for reform.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that he said would make it harder for technology companies to replace American workers with cheap foreign labor.

“Right now, widespread abuse in our immigration system is allowing American workers of all backgrounds to be replaced by workers brought in from other countries to fill the same job for sometimes less pay,” Trump said during an appearance in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he announced the new order. “This will stop.”

His executive order calls for an adjustment in how H-1B visas are distributed, but stops short of mandating specific policy changes. Trump directs government agencies to suggest changes “as soon as practicable” that would ensure the visas are awarded to “the most skilled and the highest-paid” applicants.

Currently, the H-1B program is capped at 85,000 visas distributed annually—with 65,000 general visas and 20,000 reserved for workers with a master’s degree or higher—but demand regularly exceeds supply. On Monday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it received 199,000 petitions this year for visas, which are distributed at random through a lottery. The visas last for three years, and can be renewed for three more years.

#H1B Annual Cap Reached in First Week for Fifth Consecutive Year https://t.co/AHFBLGy3TI #immigration

— Immigration Council (@immcouncil) April 7, 2017

“The H-1B program is filling a need—there are critical skills we can get abroad that aren’t always available in the U.S.,” said David Kreutzer, a senior research fellow focused on labor and trade at The Heritage Foundation. “But we want the employers that have the greatest need for the rarest skill sets to be the ones to get these visas. The current lottery mechanism, where visas are allocated by random chance, does not do that.”

In another reform announced earlier this month, the Trump administration announced that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will closely investigate employers with a high ratio of H-1B workers compared to American employees, and businesses that send visa holders to work off-site.

Experts interpret Trump’s measures against the H-1B program as explicitly targeting outsourcing companies that have come under the most scrutiny, and taken advantage of a loophole in the law that allows them to pay foreigners a minimum of $60,000.

Research compiled by Howard University associate professor Ron Hira shows that in 2014—the last year for which information is publicly available—all of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 H-1B employers used the program principally to facilitate offshoring of jobs.

The top 13 outsourcing firms accounted for a third of all granted visas in 2014.

Indian outsourcing companies such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro receive most of the visas through the lottery system because they submit tens of thousands of applications to better their odds, Hira says.

“The intent of the program is a good one—to bring in the best and brightest to fill skills gaps, but the rules are so loosely written and loosely enforced that it’s basically gone off the rails, and it almost invites firms to come in and favor H-1B visa holders instead of the U.S. worker,” Hira, who studies the H-1B program, told The Daily Signal in an interview. “It’s highly profitable to replace a U.S. worker for a H-1B visa holder. It was never intended as a cheap labor program, but it’s become that.”

India’s leading technology trade group, the National Association of Software and Services Companies, says Indian companies are being unfairly targeted.

“We believe that the current campaign to discredit our sector is driven by persistent myths, such as the ideas that H-1B visa holders are ‘cheap labor’ and ‘train their replacements,’ neither of which is accurate,” the group said in a statement after Trump announced his executive order.

How H-1B Came to Be

The H-1B visa program came to life as part of an immigration reform package signed into law in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush. The law’s sponsors viewed it as a vehicle to attract top talent to America for “specialty occupations” such as science, technology, engineering, and math that face a shortage of capable U.S. workers.

Supporters of the program note that nearly every major high-tech company, including Apple, Google, and Facebook, rely on H-1B visas, and pay higher wages.

“Most companies use the H-1B very situationally,” said William Stock, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “They use it often because they don’t have another choice.”

The law, as it was originally written, was supposed to protect American workers.

It requires employers to pay foreign workers the area’s prevailing wage for the position, and to demonstrate that hiring foreigners would not “adversely affect” the working conditions of current employees in similar jobs.

An amended version of the law, enacted in 1998, included stronger protections, ordering companies that rely heavily on H-1B workers (more than 15 percent of their workforce) to promise not to replace American employees.

Yet, the amended law included a loophole. It allows H-1B reliant companies to be exempted from the requirements about protecting American jobs if they pay the foreign workers at least $60,000 a year, or hire a foreign worker with a master’s degree.

“The wage floor is way too low—the average IT worker in the U.S. makes way more than $60,000 per year,” said Hal Salzman, a labor force expert at Rutgers University, in an interview with The Daily Signal. “One simple reform to the program would be to take these tech companies at their word that there is a strong demand for high-skilled, world-class talent. Everyone would agree that the wage level for those jobs is at least $100,000, so you make that the salary floor, and for all practical purposes, the problem is solved.”

Stock contends that many companies who use the H-1B program are already paying above market wages, and requiring them to spend more could cause them to offshore more work permanently.

“Businesses want to make sure the wage test doesn’t become so onerous that it’s unrealistic,” Stock said. “Limitations on H-1Bs will drive more workers overseas. Sure, there is abuse within the program. That happens. We live in a fallen world. We have always said robust enforcement of labor standards that are already in place is the solution to those abuses.”

‘The Program at Its Best’

Bipartisan pressure to reform the H-1B visa program remains.

Experts say that Trump’s executive order will have limited practical impact, unless Congress steps in.

For example, changes in the number of visas awarded annually would need congressional approval.

Multiple bills have been introduced in Congress that would fundamentally change how visas are distributed, and who benefits from foreign work.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., an Indian-American who represents Silicon Valley, has a personal stake in fixing the H-1B program.

Khanna, a freshman lawmaker, is one of the sponsors of a bill, called the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, that would eliminate the lottery system that rewards visas and replaces it with a “preference system.”

Under the legislation, which is also sponsored by Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, foreign students educated in the U.S. would get priority for visas. It would give special preference to those holding advanced degrees who would be paid a high wage and have valuable skills.

In addition, the proposal would not allow companies with more than 50 employees to hire more H-1B workers if 50 percent of their employees are already on H-1B and L-1s—another type of specialized work visa. Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have introduced an identical bill.

“My sense is most Americans appreciate the contribution immigrants make to the workforce, they just don’t want the system gamed,” Khanna told The Daily Signal in an interview. “But under the H-1B program today, the beneficiaries are corporate interests. A lot of the H-1B workers are facing exploitation. The empathy is as much for them as the American workers who are getting the raw deal. The program at its best is for truly exceptional people to innovate and not as a way of underpaying foreign workers.”

Ho, the American who lost his job to a contracted Indian worker, said he too does not blame the H-1B visa holder.

“I am an immigrant myself; I would be the last person to bash immigrants,” Ho said. “The person who replaced me is taking advantage of an opportunity a broken system provides him.”

Last week, Ho landed another job, working for Robert Half International, a California-based information technology company.

“I have the skills, so getting work wasn’t an issue for me,” Ho said. “This is about taking a stand, not just for myself, but for my daughters, for my family, and for all Americans.”

Josh Siegel, The Daily Signal

[eclair996-blog]

Notebook3

The “H1b” visa is an object that is worth researching. I have seen many people around me, including bachelor graduates, master graduates and even PhD graduates, struggle to apply for it. In the previous notebooks, I have been doing researches about immigration aspect of the visa, but for this time, I want to move forward to other issues of this visa, which are gender and race problems. There is a statistic analysis done by The Mercury News states that there is a huge gap between male “H1b” holders and female “H1b” holders (TMN). In 2011, more than 70 percent of  “H1b” holders entered country were men, and about 28 percent were women. In these 28 percent, most of them are India-born, especially in IT industry.  “…companies prefer to hire the men over the women,” said Karen Panetta, a Tufts University professor (TST). However, what companies desire is not what the nation desire. The “H1b” visa is linked with the immigration as shown in my Notebook2 that most foreigners’ final goal is earning the citizenship or permanent residency. In the U.S., about 67,000 immigrant men and only 39,000 immigrant women earned green cards, which is permanent U.S. residency, in a fiscal year. These immigrant women who earned green cards were holding over 50 percent of profession and management jobs, but nearly 60 percent of them would give up their jobs after they earned their residency (TST). Actually, the U.S. welcomes more foreign women than men every year, but the companies are not since women are easily dropped out of the work if they gain residency.  Getting the visa should be a fair lottery game for every foreigners until Indian Consulting Companies, which is abbreviated to “ICC”, get involved. Every year, the government is issuing out 85 thousands visas, “ICC” help Indian get one-third of the 85 thousands (TNYT). “ICC” slip through the law’s fingers to help Indian get the visas. The only way to get the visa is by drawing, and “ICC” cannot do anything for that. However, as the system is keeping everyone’s privacy and has no examination on  repetitive applications, “ICC” turn as many applications for one client (TNYT). What “ICC” do not only the submit multiple applications but also faking LCA. LCA stands for Labour Condition Application, which every applicant needs to match with his/her resume to prove he/she has the ability to work. “ICC” often use bogus resume and feigned position to apply the visa. “ICC” are successful as they provided lots of foreign workers for American companies. 

Resources: 1. Gender Gap: http://www.mercurynews.com/2013/03/18/high-skilled-immigration-debate-grows-over-stark-gender-imbalance-favoring-men-for-h-1b-visas/ 2. Women Discrimination: http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/more-men-than-women-get-visas-for-highly-skilled-immigrants/ 3. ICC: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/business/h-1b-visa-tech-cheers-for-foreign-workers.html?_r=0 4. ICC2: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/06/us/outsourcing-companies-dominate-h1b-visas.html

[go-redgirl]

Trump Rewrites H-1B Program to Help American White-Collar Workers9,731

President Donald Trump’s deputies have launched a fundamental reform of the H-1B visa system to protect American graduates from outsourcing — despite furious opposition from donors and leaders from Silicon Valley, Fortune 500 companies, and coastal investors.

The reform will end the annual award of 85,000 H-1B visas by lottery, which has been gamed by companies to import foreign workers at wages far below the salaries needed by American professionals. 

“The Trump administration is continuing to deliver on its promise to protect the American worker while strengthening the economy,” said Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli. “The current use of random selection to allocate H-1B visas … hurts American workers by bringing in relatively lower-paid foreign labor at the expense of the American workforce.”

“We have seen more progress in the last few weeks than we’ve seen in the last 30 years,” said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers, which opposes the H-1B and other visa worker programs. He continued:

If you look at it on the whole, Trump is side with working Americans. Look at the beginning of his administration when he canceled the Trans-Pacific Partnership. All the elites wanted that — he said no. He allowed labor into [negotiations about] NAFTA II — the USMCA — and they made a better deal for working man and women. On August 3, for the Tennessee Valley Authority, he used the authority he had to protect those white-collar jobs [from H-1B outsourcing]. So he’s clearly made a choice between the elites and working men and women.

Trump has pushed forward with popular and dramatic reforms of the visa worker programs since June, with additional actions taken in August and early October.

The actions may be helping his poll ratings among vital white-collar graduates in two critical states: North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

For example, Monmouth University’s early October poll showed Trump getting 38 percent among white college graduates, while Biden had 57 percent. That is down slightly from a September 2 poll that showed Trump was getting 40 percent but is above Monmouth’s July poll that showed Trump getting only 34 percent of white college voters.

On October 13, Monmouth showed Trump was getting 48 percent of white college graduates in North Carolina, up from 42 percent on September 3.

Both states have been hit hard by H-1B outsourcing, giving Trump a chance to champion the very popular economic self-interest of college graduates.

“There are many financial institutions in North Carolina that are abusing cheap labor and H-1Bs,” Jay Palmer, a civil rights activist who works with abused visa workers, told Breitbart News. He continued:

Charlotte, N.C., is the hotbed of visa fraud. They’re laying off American workers left and right because there is so much cheap [foreign] labor in North Carolina … They’re hiring anybody through third-party consulting companies, and they are paying them on 1099s [as gig workers]  to work at the financial institutions. They’re replacing American workers such as risk managers and actuaries — any jobs they can fill with cheap labor. It’s horrible. You don’t even know how bad it is.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that H-1B visa workers hold almost 600,000 white-collar jobs.

But other estimates say 900,000 jobs are allocated to H-1B workers. In addition, at least another 600,000 foreign workers hold white-collar jobs after being imported via other pipelines, dubbed Optional Practical Training (OPT), L-1, J-1, TN, Curricular Practical Training (CPT), and H4EAD.

Some of these million-plus foreign workers stay in the United States until they are trained by Americans and can take the white-collar jobs back to India.

But most of these foreign workers come from low-tier universities and work for many years at low wages in mid-skill jobs in the hope or expectation of getting green cards and citizenship delivered via a current or future employer. For example, at least 300,000 Indian H-1B workers are now working while waiting for employer-sponsored green cards. Many more visa workers work as gig workers for little-known subcontractors in the hopes of getting into the H-1B program so they can get citizenship.

CEOs at Fortune 500 companies quietly outsource many of their full-time jobs to this huge “Green Card Workforce,” so cutting costs and boosting near-term stock values for shareholders and C-Suite executives.

This green card outsourcing prevents many American graduates from getting paid jobs where they can use the degrees they earned with borrowed tuition money. Also, outsourcing pushes many experienced American professionals from mid-career jobs, while millions more face lower salaries and persistent job insecurity.

Corporate diversity reports, university reports, and census data show that large slices of the nation’s technology workforce consist of ill-paid, ill-treated foreign workers who have the same job security and professional authority as migrant stoop workers in U.S. fields.

The large number of foreign workers are used to minimize U.S. professionals’ role and prevent the formation of innovative companies. The foreigners’ limited skills and lack of workplace rights help to reduce productivity, the quality of software, and to slow research.

But this labor policy also delivers workplace stability, cheaper graduates, and higher stock values to the current executives and leading shareholders of the Fortune 500 companies.

A statement from the Department of Homeland Security described the new rule:

WASHINGTON —Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced the transmission to the Federal Register of a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that would prioritize the selection of H-1B registrations (or petitions, if the registration process is suspended) based on corresponding wage levels in order to better protect the economic interests of U.S. workers, while still allowing U.S. employers to meet their personnel needs and remain globally competitive.

Modifying the H-1B cap selection process by replacing the random selection process with a wage-level-based selection process is a better way to allocate H-1Bs when demand exceeds supply. If finalized as proposed, this new selection process would incentivize employers to offer higher wages or petition for positions requiring higher skills and higher-skilled workers instead of using the program to fill relatively lower-paid vacancies.

…

This effort would only affect H-1B registrations submitted by prospective petitioners seeking to file H-1B cap-subject petitions. It would be implemented for both the H-1B regular cap and the H-1B advanced degree exemption, but would not change the order of selection between the two as established by the H-1B registration requirement final rule.

DHS will open a public comment period once the NPRM is published in the Federal Register. Interested parties will have 30 days to submit comments relevant to the proposed rule and 60 days to submit comments relevant to the proposed information collection. The Department will review all properly submitted comments, consider them carefully, and draft responses before issuing a final rule.

In contrast to Trump’s partial populism, Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign theme claims, “We are in a battle for the soul of this nation.”

“When Biden talks about ‘Saving the Soul of America,’ he is whistling through a cemetery,” responded Lynn:

Under globalists like Biden, the neoliberals have destroyed of hundreds of thousands of good middle-class and upper-middle-class jobs. That is what killed the American dream. The American Dream is,  if you want to find it, you go to the cemetery. That’s where you’re gonna find the people have actually lived it. If you’re a millennial, looking to get into the job market, or you’re a boomer getting ready to retire, you’re very insecure right now … I wish Biden would be more concerned about the body.

Biden is backed by companies that have replaced Americans with H-1Bs, he said. “One need only look at the support that he’s been getting from Google, Facebook, and Twitter … it is obvious.”

“This is why it is so critical that if Vice President Biden wins in November, he follows through on his commitment to reforming our failed immigration system,” wrote Todd Schulte, director of the FWD.us advocacy group. The group was created in 2013 by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and other coastal investors who were hoping to get the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” amnesty through Congress.

The bill would have dramatically accelerated the inflow of consumers, renters, and workers into the U.S. economy and also allowed an unlimited inflow of foreign postgraduates. “Because the bill would increase the rate of growth of the labor force, average wages would be held down in the first decade after enactment,” said a report by the Congressional Budget Office.

If Biden “follows through on his commitment to reforming our failed immigration system … We can create a streamlined modern visa system so that people who want to come to contribute or unify their families can do so,” Schulte wrote October 28.

Biden’s 2020 platform promises to let companies import more visa workers, let mayors import a new class of visa workers, and allow an unlimited flow of foreign graduates through U.S. universities and into white-collar jobs. The plan says Biden would “exempt from any cap [the] recent graduates of Ph.D. programs in STEM fields.”

In contrast, Trump is likely to reject migrants, narrow asylum claims yet further, and fund the transfer of migrants waiting in Mexico back to Latin American countries. His 2020 plan offers broadly popular — but quite limited — pro-American restrictions on migration and visa workers. For example, in many speeches, Trump generally ignores the economic impact of blue-collar and white-collar migration on Americans while stressing issues of crime, outsiders, diseases, or welfare, even though his low-immigration policies have been a popular boon to Americans.

Open-ended legal migration is praised by business and progressives partly because migrants’ arrival helps transfer wealth from wage-earners to stockholders.

Migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

Migration also allows investors and CEOs to skimp on labor-saving technology, sideline U.S. minorities, ignore disabled people, exploit stoop labor in the fields, short-change labor in the cities, impose tight control on American professionals, centralize technological innovation, undermine labor rights, and to get many progressive reporters to cheerlead for Wall Street’s priorities.

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:

2020 Election Immigration Politics American jobs Donald TrumpH-1B Visas North Carolina OPT Pennsylvania visa workers

[thetechmedia1]

H-1B Visa Ban: What it Means for Indian IT

US President Donald Trump issued an order to suspend H-1B visas along with other foreign work visas for the rest of the year, stating that the step was essential to help millions of Americans who have lost their jobs due to the current economic crisis. Many of the tech industry’s biggest and most influential companies criticized this move as it prevents highly skilled foreign citizens from entering the US through the end of the year.

While Trump was reportedly mulling on the work visa ban for a while now, the recent announcement would severely affect Indian IT firms and their ability to meet their project deadlines as over three-to-four lakh H-1B visa workers in the US are employed by Indian IT firms like Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro and Cognizant that account over two-thirds of the H-1B visas. Nonetheless, some see a silver lining waiting for tech professionals in India and the move would not be as disruptive as it seems now.

Indian IT in troubled water

With over 60% of engineers in the US comprise H-1B visa holders, and three-fourth being Indian, the ban will surely impact the prospects of the H-1B visa applicants from top Indian IT services firms in India .

With Trump supporting stricter immigrant, non-immigrant visa regimes, the Indian IT firms have reduced their applications for H1-B visas considerably since the last couple of years with efforts to hire more locals in the US, as TCS said in its annual report that it has nearly 20,000 US nationals on its payroll.

However, industry analysts fear that a long term ban of H-1B visas which recruit workers for specialist positions in fields such as IT, science will hurt the project deliverability of Indian IT services firms because of shortage in the talent.

“The overall unemployment rate in the United States nearly quadrupled between February and May of 2020 — producing some of the most extreme unemployment ever recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Trump wrote in the order. “Without intervention, the United States faces a potentially protracted economic recovery with persistently high unemployment if labor supply outpaces labor demand.

Trump’s expanded travel restrictions by the newly announced freeze of the H-1B, H-2B, H-4, L-1 and J-1 visas will prohibit about 525,000 people from entering the country, including 170,000 green-card holders who have been prevented from entering the US since April, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal that quoted a senior administration official.

Stating this as a ‘significant number’, the official said President Trump is focusing on getting Americans back to work as quickly as possible after suffering this hit to the US economy based on the coronavirus and the harm it’s done.

Read more: Trump May Suspend H-1B Visas: Trouble Time for Indian Techies?

H1B Ban: The fierce opposition

The Directive however, is fiercely opposed by business leaders and IT lobbies, who believe it will block their ability to recruit critically needed workers from countries overseas for jobs that Americans are not willing to do or are not capable of performing.

According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), the new order will prevent Indian companies and thousands of other organizations from accessing the talent they need from overseas. The proclamation will impose new challenge and possibly force more work to be performed offshore since the local talent is not available.

Nasscom wrote to the President and his Secretaries that policies such as these undercut the ability to grow and create jobs, inhibit the provision of critical infrastructure services, and add burdensome new regulatory requirements and costs.

Nasscom argued that American workers are facing greater challenges than they have in years, but that does not mean that talent shortages do not continue to exist.  Despite national unemployment trends across the economy, the National Foundation for American Progress found that the unemployment rate for computer professionals actually went down from 3% in January 2020 to 2.8% in April 2020, according to its analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey.

“Virtually every segment of the American economy, including manufacturing, technology, accounting, medicine, among others, employ skilled workers from other countries for the innovation, productivity, and skill they bring to their companies or for their clients,” said the Nasscom statement.

Highly skilled non-immigrants are playing critical roles in the delivery of these services and the development of these services and products. Without their continued contributions to the U.S. economy, the economic pain would worsen, industry would slow, and the timeline for a treatment and cure of Covid-19 would lengthen. Moreover, the people who come to the United States on H-1B and L-1 visas pay taxes and contribute to their communities and to local economies in myriad other ways as well.

Studies have revealed the immeasurable value non-immigrants have and will bring to America, said Nasscom stating that the IT body hopes that the Administration will rethink its stated plans to move forward on a series of regulatory changes that would place additional restrictions and costs on visa programs while doing little more than amplifying the harm already being done to the U.S. economy.

Groups representing Silicon Valley technology giants also criticized the move. The Information Technology Industry Council, a high-profile lobby group for large technology companies including Silicon Valley giants Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, Oracle and Salesforce, said Trump’s move came at a bad time, and urged him to reconsider.

BSA, The Software Alliance, whose members include Microsoft and Slack, urged the administration in a statement to “refrain from restricting employment of highly-skilled foreign professionals,” adding that “these restrictions will negatively impact the U.S. economy” and decrease job opportunities for Americans.

Silicon Valley’s technology companies for years have relied heavily on the H-1B, pushing for an expansion to the annual cap of 85,000 new visas and arguing that they need more visas to secure the world’s top talent. Critics point to reported abuses and say the visa, intended for jobs requiring specialized skills, has been used by staffing and outsourcing companies, and major tech firms, to supplant U.S. workers, drive down wages and facilitate outsourcing of U.S. jobs, believe experts.

Read more: Indo-US Collaboration to Advance Business Post COVID-19

So far this year, Facebook has received approval for 666 new and extended H-1B visas for its Menlo Park office, Google has been approved for 824 new and extended visas for its Mountain View offices, Apple has obtained approval for 670 new and extended visas for its Cupertino offices, and electric car manufacturer Tesla received 186 new and extended visas for its offices in Palo Alto and its Fremont factory, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The H-1B is also widely used by universities — Stanford University was approved for 94 visas this year and the University of California, Berkeley for 39.

The silver lining?

Some however see a silver lining in this entire process. They believe, while suspending H1B visa for the rest of 2020, US President Donald Trump mentioned merit-based H1B visa for all foreign workers. And if merit-based visa is introduced, it can be beneficial for all Indians, especially those who are highly skilled, and are experts in their domain of work.

Under the current system of H1B visa allocation, a lottery determines who gets the visa, and who are denied. For immigration visa, there is The Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which takes into account the nationality of the applicant, and if citizens from a nation have received more than 50,000 green cards, then immigration visa is denied.

However, under merit based immigration and H1B visa, the US government will consider giving visas to the highly skilled, and in-demand employees. A simple check would be the salary offered by US companies to the H1B visa applicants. In other words, the ones with the maximum salary will be given more preference, compared to low-paid workers.

This will ensure that only the cream of the foreign workers, whose work is in high demand will be given more preference, and also it will be open up entry-level jobs for the Americans, since H1B visa won’t be entertain that.

Indian IT workers, who are the most educated, experienced and seasonal employees with highest salaries, will be the most beneficial category, in case merit-based H1B visa is introduced.

Also as Tech Mahindra MD and CEO CP Gurnani said in an interview to CNBC-TV18, Trump administration’s move to restrict work visas will not lead to any disruption for the Indian IT services sector. He said the industry had prepared itself for unrealistic immigration challenges, and is not overly depending on H-1B visas.

“We were locally hiring and training a lot more engineers. So India’s own applications for H-1B visas have reduced. The impact on India or on Indian companies will be less in the short-term, it is not going to lead to any disruption,” Gurnani said, adding that the US needed Indian IT talent more than the other way round.

    The post H-1B Visa Ban: What it Means for Indian IT appeared first on TTM.com.

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