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H1-B Administrators Are Challenging An Unusually Large Number of Applications (bloomberg.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader decaffeinated quotes Bloomberg: Starting this summer, employers began noticing that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was challenging an unusually large number of H-1B applications. Cases that would have sailed through the approval process in earlier years ground to a halt under requests for new paperwork. The number of challenges -- officially known as "requests for evidence" or RFEs -- are up 44 percent compared to last year, according to statistics from USCIS...
"We're entering a new era," said Emily Neumann, an immigration lawyer in Houston who has been practicing for 12 years. "There's a lot more questioning, it's very burdensome." She said in past years she's counted on 90 percent of her petitions being approved by Oct. 1 in years past. This year, only 20 percent of the applications have been processed. Neumann predicts she'll still have many unresolved cases by the time next year's lottery happens in April 2018.
"We're entering a new era," said Emily Neumann, an immigration lawyer in Houston who has been practicing for 12 years. "There's a lot more questioning, it's very burdensome." She said in past years she's counted on 90 percent of her petitions being approved by Oct. 1 in years past. This year, only 20 percent of the applications have been processed. Neumann predicts she'll still have many unresolved cases by the time next year's lottery happens in April 2018.
The H1B visa program is used intentionally as cheap labor to replace the American worker under the guise of 'we just can't find anyone skilled local'.
It's more about finding a worker who will work for 1/3rd the salary.
Oh no, they'll have to pay higher wages instead of using foreign labor! Won't somebody think of the corporate profits?
There are valid situations where there's nobody with that skill available in the US. That is not the case for 90% of H1-B visas.
H-1B visa abuse is pretty commonplace. Even B-1 visa abuse is commonplace where people from offshore wind up working here in the US for 90-180 days, then get rotated out, and another batch of people from Kerala or Bangalore moved in. The fines for that are so cheap that it is written off as a cost of doing business.
The problem is that there are many tax incentives to abuse the visa system. For example, I can pay the payroll tax for 20 FTEs, or I can pay some contracting firm that hauls in people fresh off the boat, and don't have to pay a dime. As an added bonus, I can tell them to punt someone I don't like because I feel like it, and the contracting place removes them. No separation, no work on my side other than locking some accounts. Plus, I don't have to worry about HR and interviews.
So, until the system is fixed that encourages outsourcing to H-1B abusing contract firms, we will see this shit continuing. The H-1B program needs to be tossed, or modified where for every dollar paid for an H-1B, another dollar gets paid to the US government earmarked for education, with a minimum salary of five times the median income.
In British Colonial times, the British traveled to India to set up companies there and exploit the most talented natives.
In US Colonial times, the most talented come voluntarily to the US to be exploited.
Strange times, eh?
H1-B is total crap and needs to be eliminated ASAP. Oh, but that lobbyist money from Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.
Your Congress Critter cannot argue with that money!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The H-1B visa program is yet another means for potential terrorists to enter the United States. Anything that reduces the number of H-1B Syrian refugees entering the United States reduces the number of potential terrorists. The H-1B program is a threat both to American jobs and to national security.
ORLY. What percentage of people who committed terrorist acts since, say 1990, have held H1-B visas at one time?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
There is plenty of available skilled labor here in America. We should not be importing labor.
You know the likely result of this? "Oh crap, we need to hire more Americans!" followed shortly by "damn we need to invest in and train our people, hiring is too expensive these days!"
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You know the real agenda isn't to "encourage" companies to hire domestic talent, it just happens to coincide with their mission to Keep the Brown People Out.
There are very good economic models that suggest that importing labor is bad. There's some statistical evidence that immigrants that don't take up the new culture are a safety risk due to increased crime, and that immigrants use more social services than citizens.
Other countries have extreme immigration policies, and several countries don't allow immigration at all (such as China, where you can't immigrate even if you own a Chinese business and are married to a Chinese citizen), and many have strictly controlled borders. Would the US be exceptional if we did the same?
Furthermore, very few people in the US are actually racist. Ignoring the "all whites are racist" bullshit and looking at the actual statistics, it's estimated that there are only about 2000 actual white supremacists in the US. The hair-triggered left reports of a banana peel signifying racism notwithstanding, it's not a real issue. Whites simply don't care what someone's color is. (Behaviour, on the other hand, is an issue.)
Black lives matter is, statistically speaking, completely off the mark. This does not imply that there is no problem and that things couldn't be made better, but it's false and ineffective to address that problem first, before the elephant in the room.
And yet, despite all the statistical evidence to the contrary and lack of contrary evidence, you have insight into the *real* reason we want to limit immigration: it's because secretly, down deep, we want to "Keep The Brown People Out".
(And your insight does not stem from the very good evidence that immigrants vote en-masse for a certain party.)
Despite not consciously being racist, not really caring about the race of whoever we interact with you're here to tell us the real reason we act the way we do?
Because you're somehow smarter or better informed than us?
Probably the paperwork requirements are just BS, but simply putting obstacles in the path and making it more of a hassle to get these visas actually makes sense. In principle, you have to try to recruit US citizens first, but there are ways around that requirement. For example, you advertise an entry-level job with a low salary, reject applicants for not having some very specific job experience or skills, then hire a highly experienced overqualified foreigner at the same low salary. I'd be very surprised if it weren't true the in a majority of cases, H1-B holders were sought because they're younger and cheaper, not because they have special skills. What the government really ought to do is have an auction for these visas instead of a lottery, If Google, Microsoft et al. really need these people, they shouldn't mind paying $100,000 or more bounty to get them. Use the money to fund scholarships for US students in fields where there are supposedly such dire shortages, instead of saddling them with $100,000 of student debt.
they had an amazing, unreplicable skill set of the above and the ability to work on 15k per year.
I've worked with a number of these so-called "highly skilled" H-1B's and they should have been more heavily scrutinized to begin with. Many of them are misrepresenting their abilities. I've worked with enough of them to have real, factual evidence from direct experience to back up this claim. In all the instances that I've observed, they were all H-1B's from India. That's not to say that all H-1B's from India that I've worked misrepresented themselves but it's definitely the overwhelming majority. There is a Technical Scrum Master at my work that is exceptional. It is valid to question why we see many H-1B's that are quite frankly worse than college interns to get to the bottom of it. I think it's great that the US Government is doing that. If we're going to hire H-1B's we need to make sure that the ones we're hiring are truly the best of the best. That's what the program was designed to do.
We'll make great pets
H1B shouldn't be a lottery. It should be an auction. Then you'd just bid a salary without the the red tape you may not mind but that still costs taxpayer money. If someone wants to outbid you on a half-literate code monkey, that's their prerogative and their loss. Abuse goes away. Artificial wage depression goes away. A fixed number of slots that you can bid on makes the thing merit-based on its own and keeps the loonies quiet about letting in too many people who don't come from our culture.
The problem with H1Bs, is they allow the company to have a leverage over their employees beyond just mere payment. Your employer can essentially deport you at will. Not just fire and cut off income, but literally cut off residency. This leads to a terrible power imbalance, that of course the employers would seek.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
That's not what he said. They need to follow the process and meet the requirements.
What we have are companies claiming they can't find qualified people, then bring in people that are equally as unqualified, but measurably cheaper.
if you are going to have rules, fucking enforce them.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Modded down. Whatever.
Either the moderators are poor at reading comprehension, or there really are people out there who think that the H-1B program is some kind of welcome-mat for terrorists.
One may argue that H-1B visa-holders displace American workers, but are they terrorists? I think not. H-1B visas are very hard to get. It's much easier to get a student visa, like the 9/11 hijackers did. And let's not forget that most of the people who have committed terrorist acts since 9/11 have had strong ties to the USA already, some being born or raised here.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.